A Vaccine Will Not Be Enough
[no-caption] Angus Greig SAPIENS host Jen Shannon speaks with Agustín Fuentes, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University, to unpack his insight that the COVID-19 pandemic is a…
Tag: Biology
The Green Woods of Resilience
Conservationist Madeleine Nyiratuza (center) walks through Rwanda’s Gishwati Forest with three eco-guards, who were charged with protecting the area. Courtesy of Madeleine Nyiratuza For a…
Adventures with Peccaries pt. 2
I spent time out in the Hill Country, north of San Antonio ,Texas. The clan that I worked with on this trip was made up of 8 total…
When Colorblind Parenting Meets Anti-racism
Author Zeray Alemseged and his daughter attend a Black Lives Matter protest in Chicago. Peter Stamos I watched the uniformed White policeman kneel on the Black man’s neck…
What’s Behind Humanity’s Love-Hate Relationship With Exercise?
Many people have a strong desire for physical rest despite the fact that health experts advise them to exercise more. Heart rules/Pexels At the start of the COVID-19…
My Nonbinary Child
[no-caption] Andrew Hasson/Getty Images “Mom, how do you know you’re a woman?” Sarah, my only child, startled me by asking this question during a telephone conversation this spring.…
What Milk-Sharing Communities Reveal
[no-caption] Getty Images Heather Wascak was devastated. In 2014, within days of giving birth to a baby girl, Lucia, she was aching to be with her child. “She’s…
Can Archaeology Dogs Smell Ancient Time?
Dax is a trained archaeology dog, seen here at work in southwest Montana. Lauri Travis On a sunny, cloudless afternoon in Croatia, a fierce wind known as a…
Can an “Invasive Species” Earn the Right to Stay?
Macaques sit near Florida’s Silver River. Rachel Simmons/Flickr Steve Johnson never thought he’d have to worry about death threats, not in his line of work. Johnson is a…
Do I Have Microremains in My Teeth?
Southwestern Finland isn’t a great place for archaeologists to find anything other than the sturdiest of remains. The pine needles that fall to the boreal forest floor make…
Venice’s Black Death and the Dawn of Quarantine
The island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, shown here, was one of the isles where the city of Venice quarantined plague-stricken individuals. Archeoclub d’Italia Sede di Venezia Just beyond th…
Why Did Passenger Pigeons Go Extinct?
Nineteenth-century hunters in Louisiana shoot passenger pigeons. Smith Bennett/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under C…
Coronavirus and Coping With Death
While sheltering in place in California during the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about my graduation day—but not because it was particularly…
On the ‘Fluid Mosaic’
Introduction The theme of the Fluid mosaic offers an interdisciplinary journey, as Homi Bhabha would say (Bhabha 1994)[1] in-between different domains, such as visual art, dance, poetry, performance,…
Archaeology Is Having a Great Century So Far
Nearly a century ago, the focus of human origins research shifted from Europe to Africa—such as to the Oldupai (Olduvai) Gorge in Tanzania, one of the cradles of…
Humans in 2019—From Discoveries to Disasters
This image shows various views of the pinky bone of a Denisovan-Neanderthal hybrid found in Siberia. Thomas Higham/University of Oxford Denisovan Deluge This year brought a host of…
Does Tattooing Boost Health?
A Samoan schoolteacher receives a full pe’a, the traditional tattoo generally worn by males. Christopher D. Lynn This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been rep…
Neanderthal Legs and Feet—Suited to Sprinting
If you’re like me, you view long-distance running as a somewhat unrealistic aspiration and see those people who do it well as remarkable creatures. The truth, though, is…
“Ain’t no future in your future”: Temporalities of Recovery and Resilience in Flint, Michigan
By Talia Gordon, University of Chicago § A future full of possibilities starts by drinking pure quality water – Nestlé “Pure Life®” Bottled Water In October 2018, Mayor…
Are Colors Universal?
[no-caption] Marcel Hirshegger/SAPIENS Remember the meme #TheDress? Was it white and gold, or blue and black? With the help of Nicola Jones, a freelance science journalist who writes…
How Rituals of Pain Help Heal
During the kavadi attam ritual in Mauritius, devotees are voluntarily pierced, in some cases hundreds of times. Dimitris Xygalatas Inside a stuffy, overcrowded, and overheated room, a gro…
Case Closed: You Can’t Make a Knife Out of Frozen Poop
Researchers tested the cutting potential of knife-shaped frozen human feces. Michelle R. Bebber In what might constitute the year’s strangest salvo against the scourge of “fake news,” ant…
Things That Are Not Alive, but Which May Be Alive in a Certain Way: An Interdisciplinary Essay on a Relational Theory of Life
By Meredith Root-Bernstein, AgroParisTech, INRA § This blog post is adapted from a paper given at “Anthropology Off Earth,” Collège de France and l’Observatoire de Paris, 4-5 June…
Grounds for Climate Change Mitigation in South Korea’s Tidal Mudflats
By Gebby Keny, Rice University § Blue Carbon Muddy boots on the shore of Wah Ohn beach. Photo by author. “The trick is to step with your right…