Anthropology › Section D · Evolution, primates, and early hominins › Topic D.2
The science of taxonomy
Before anthropologists can say how humans relate to apes or to fossil ancestors, they need a shared way of naming and grouping living things. Taxonomy supplies it, and deciding where one species ends and another begins turns out to be one of the hardest problems in the field.
In this topic
- Why scientific names exist
- Linnaeus and two-part names
- A hierarchy of ranks
- Worked example: classifying humans
- From similarity to ancestry
- The biological species
- Other species definitions
- When species meet: hybrid zones
- Worked example: one species or two?
- Folk taxonomies
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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