Homo sapiens, (Latin:'wise man') the species to which all modern human beings belong. Homo sapiens is one of several species grouped into the genus Homo, but it is the only one that is not extinct. The name Homo sapiens was applied in 1758 by the father of modern biological classification Carolus Linnaeus. It had long been known that human beings physically resemble the primates more closely than any other known living organisms, but at the time it was a daring act to classify human beings within the same framework used for the rest of nature. Charles Darwin’s treatise on evolution, On the Origin of Species, would only come 101 years later.
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