I am not the person you replied to but I believe they were referring to Homo sapiens being said to have emerged roughly 2-300k years ago, so 0.3 million, not “millions” (plural). Homo the genus might be a mil or two, but not the species, although you said “humankind” thus implying the species.
Maybe it’s just lost in translation. In my native language we’d call homo erectus etc. (primal) humans, so for me they are part of the humankind although they’re not modern humans.
I don’t know what I expected when I started scrolling through comments, but I certainly didn’t expect "how long humanity has survived depends on how you define ‘people’ "
I am not the person you replied to but I believe they were referring to Homo sapiens being said to have emerged roughly 2-300k years ago, so 0.3 million, not “millions” (plural). Homo the genus might be a mil or two, but not the species, although you said “humankind” thus implying the species.
Maybe it’s just lost in translation. In my native language we’d call homo erectus etc. (primal) humans, so for me they are part of the humankind although they’re not modern humans.
You are correct. The word “homo” literally means human.
Homo sapiens are the only living humans, but Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthalus are all humans also.
However we usually use the term “archaic human” or even change human to “hominid” to prevent confusion between “modern humans”.
You weren’t wrong, but this is a kind of jargon which can confuse people.
I don’t know what I expected when I started scrolling through comments, but I certainly didn’t expect "how long humanity has survived depends on how you define ‘people’ "