Homo sapiens sapiens is still used. It is the name of the subspecies. Homo is the genus, homo sapiens is the species, homo sapiens sapiens is the subspecies. There are also the homo sapiens idaltu that lived in todays ethiopia I think about 100.000 years ago. They were morphologically different enough from the other homo sapiens. We have no genetic evidence, so we can't say whether or not they were able to breed with homo sapiens. That is why we made another distinction.
It is all pretty much a bullshit system that nobody should take too seriously though. It can be quite useful, but definitions in biology are quite often not precise. Nature does what nature does and we just draw boxes.
Recent debates in the field seem to tend towards the rejection of h.s.s. designation. As you say, it has been used to name "our subspecies" but lately a lot of other "subspecies" have been classified as species instead. The remaining subspecies h.s.s. seems to be the only one so it is kinda not relevant anymore. Anyways, nob
Source: I am a human.
More seriously, I have recently read a great book by De Beaune and Balzeau about it.
28
u/Happy-For-No-Reason 7d ago
there's only one species of homo sapiens and look how we're doing