[Thommas]

..a fossil specimen, definitely a human that, at least in terms of morphology, predated the Neanderthal and may have had more in common, physically, with Homo erectus..

This gets a wee bit confusing. While "definitely human," this specimen is something akin to Homo erectus (a non-human?) I was under the impression that only homo sapiens sapiens were "human."

Have the lines between human and non-human become so blurred?

[SunkenCiv]

Homo Sapiens Sapiens is the only modern human species — as John Anthony West amusingly put it, “smart old us with our hydrogen bombs and striped toothpaste” — but anything Homo is human, dating from about 2.4 million years ago. By contrast, Australopithecines are prehuman, despite being bipedal.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Have the lines between human and non-human become so blurred?

Have you checked out the various OWS sites recently? s/off