The Hominidae, whose members are known as great apes or hominids, are a taxonomic family of primates

that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo, the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan;
Gorilla, the eastern and western gorilla; Pan, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo; and Homo, which
includes modern humans and its extinct relatives and ancestors, such as Homo erectus.

Homo habilis is a proposed archaic species of Homo, which lived between roughly 2.1 and 1.5 million
years ago, during the Gelasian and early Calabrian stages of the Pleistocene geological epoch.

Homo erectus is a species of archaic humans that lived throughout most of the Pleistocene geological
epoch. Its earliest fossil evidence dates to 1.8 million years ago (discovered 1991 in Dmanisi, Georgia)

Homo rudolfensis is an extinct species of the Hominini tribe, on the morphological boundary between
the genera Homo and Australopithecus. Its oldest fossil is dated to 2.4 million years ago, at the very
beginning of the Pleistocene, with the possible exception of the LD 350-1 representing the oldest fossil
evidence of the emergence of archaic humans (the genus Homo) from their australopithecine ancestors.

Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensisare an extinct species or subspecies of

archaic humans in the genus Homo, who lived in Eurasia until 40,000 years ago. Currently earliest fossils
of Neanderthals in Europe are dated between 430,000 to 450,000 years ago, and thereafter
Neanderthals expanded into Southwest and Central Asia. They are known from numerous fossils, as well
as stone tool assemblages. Almost all assemblages younger than 160,000 years are of the so-called
Mousterian techno-complex, which is characterized by tools made out of stone flakes. The type
specimen is Neanderthal 1, found in Neander Valley in the German Rhineland, in 1856.

Homo floresiensis ("Flores Man"; nicknamed "hobbit") is an extinct species in the genus Homo. The
remains of an individual that would have stood about 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) in height were discovered in 2003
at Liang Bua on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Partial skeletons of nine individuals have been
recovered, including one complete skull, referred to as "LB1". These remains have been the subject of
intense research to determine whether they represent a species distinct from modern humans, though
the dominant consensus is that these remains do represent a distinct species due to genetic and
anatomical differences

Homo sapiens The species was initially thought to have emerged from a predecessor within the genus
Homo around 300,000 to 200,000 years ago. A problem with the morphological classification of
"anatomically modern" was that it would not have included certain extant populations. For this reason,
a lineage-based (cladistic) definition of H. sapiens has been suggested, in which H. sapiens would by
definition refer to the modern human lineage following the split from the Neanderthal lineage. Such a
cladistic definition would extend the age of H. sapiens to upward of 500,000 years.

Extant human populations have historically been divided into subspecies, but since c. the 1980s all
extant groups tend to be subsumed into a single species, H. sapiens, avoiding division into subspecies
altogether.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens

It is believed that modern humans like you and I first originated on the Earth around 50,000 years ago in
Africa. These modern humans are referred to by historians as Homo sapiens sapiens. Within just a few
thousand years these modern humans had spread to every continent across the entire planet, and onto
many islands.

As Homo sapiens sapiens migrated outward from Africa, it is believed that they wiped out Neanderthals,
either by absorbing them through intermarriage, or by destroying them through war and competition.