Prehumans

Prehumans is an informal, non-technical term used to describe members of the human lineage that lived before anatomically modern Homo sapiens. In common usage, it can refer to early hominins that predates or precedes modern humans, rather than a single taxonomic group. Because it is not a formal category, its precise meaning varies among sources.

Fossil evidence centers on several groups. Australopithecines, such as Australopithecus afarensis, lived about 4 to 2 million years ago and show clear evidence of bipedalism. The genus Homo appears later, with species such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus or ergaster, dating roughly 2.5 million to 1.5 million years ago and 1.9 million to 0.1 million years ago respectively, marking broader brain growth and tool use. Later archaic humans, including Homo heidelbergensis and some populations of Homo neanderthalensis, inhabited parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia before the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa around 300,000 years ago. The fossil record thus depicts a lineage rather than a single "prehuman" form.

Because terminology varies, many researchers prefer terms such as hominins, archaic humans, or early Homo to describe these ancestors. The prehuman concept helps summarize the evolutionary steps toward modern humans—bipedal locomotion, increased brain size, and cultural innovations such as tool use—but it does not denote a specific taxonomic unit.