Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various extinct hominins.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Pertaining to the first humans or the beginning of humankind.
  • noun One of the earliest humans.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From proto- +‎ human.

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Examples

  • It's not unlike the discovery of a previously unknown species of protohuman deep within a cave somewhere, revealing some new twist in the constantly expanding canon of human evolution.

    Bob Cesca: Governor Haley Barbour: A New Level of Stupid 2010

  • It's not unlike the discovery of a previously unknown species of protohuman deep within a cave somewhere, revealing some new twist in the constantly expanding canon of human evolution.

    Bob Cesca: Governor Haley Barbour: A New Level of Stupid 2010

  • I'd like to see some more research on the notion that we all carry a species memory running back to the protohuman days.

    Deep Phobic Memory Steven Barnes 2010

  • In the psychic menagerie of Bion and Klein, Beckett may also have found hints for the protohuman organisms, the worms and bodiless heads in pots, that populate his various underworlds.

    The Making of Samuel Beckett Coetzee, J.M. 2009

  • Or perhaps such racism is an echo of internecine protohuman forest warfare.

    The Fruit Hunters Adam Leith Gollner 2008

  • Or perhaps such racism is an echo of internecine protohuman forest warfare.

    The Fruit Hunters Adam Leith Gollner 2008

  • Not to mention the central plot about a young scientist who befriends a protohuman boy and nearly makes fire with a tough prehistoric babe named Niawo.

    The Descent Of Man 2008

  • Or perhaps such racism is an echo of internecine protohuman forest warfare.

    The Fruit Hunters Adam Leith Gollner 2008

  • Ever since the 1974 discovery in Ethiopia of the fossil of a little protohuman christened Lucy, it was clear what sort of human ancestor must have walked the Horn of Africa just before her: one that was more apelike.

    Out Of Africa, A Missing Link 2008

  • If you visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History last week, you would have found that the second-floor Physical Anthropology galleries, housing the reconstruction of the head of the protohuman A ustralopithecus, have been closed.

    African Dream 2008

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