Julian Huxley, author of Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, began his 1957 essay titled ‘Transhumanism’ with these words: “As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself, able to understand something of its past history and its possible future. This cosmic self-awareness is being realized in one tiny fragment of the universe—in a few of us human beings.”

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When biologists study human evolution, they usually refer to the way that various species of the Homo genus have evolved during the last two million years, illustrated in this diagram, as an extension of one in an article in the prestigious scientific journal Nature in 2012, titled ‘What makes a modern human’, by Chris Stringer, from the Natural History Museum in London.

When Carl Linnaeus named the human species Homo sapiens ‘wise human’ in the tenth edition of Systema Naturæ in 1758, he did not define the essential characteristics of humankind in contrast to the other biological species. Furthermore, Linnaeus did not explicitly designate a typical specimen of Homo sapiens (other than himself), which is done whenever possible, depositing type species in museums.

To be added.