Anthropogenesis

Hominization, also called anthropogenesis, refers to the process of becoming human, and is used in somewhat different contexts in the fields of paleontology and paleoanthropology, archeology, philosophy and theology.

As of 2013^[update], paleoanthropologists tend to regard the search for a precise point of hominization as somewhat irrelevant, seeing the process as gradual. Anatomically modern humans (AMH, or AMHS) developed within the species Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago.

Many thinkers have attempted to explain hominization - from Classical times through Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel and Engels, who wrote an essay on The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. The contemporary study of hominization in archeology often looks for signs that mark out human habitations from pre-human forms: for example, the use of grave goods.

In ancient philosophy, "hominization" referred to the ensoulment of the human fetus. When the soul is said to enter the fetus at some time later than conception, this is sometimes called "delayed hominization", as in the Aristotelian belief in ensoulment 40 days after conception.

In the context of modern theistic evolution, "hominization" refers to the theory that there was a point at which a population of hominids who had (or may have) evolved by a process of evolution acquired souls and thus (with their descendants) became fully human in theological terms. This group might be restricted to Adam and Eve, or indeed to , although versions of the theory allow for larger populations. The point at which this occurred should essentially be the same as in paleoanthropology and archeology, but theological discussion of the matter tends to concentrate on the theoretical. The term "special transformism" refers to theories of a divine intervention of some sort, achieving hominization.

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