- collectively, the very robust, regionally differentiated human populations that lived in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa from 35,000 to 200,000 years ago.
- any physically robust, premodern form of the genus Homo, comprising species that were anatomically intermediate forms and regional variants between H. erectus and modern H. sapiens: fossil evidence suggests that certain archaic Homo populations may have direct ancestral lines to modern humans.
