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…
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…
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…
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, high priestess of a convent of hijras, takes selfies with admirers at India’s 2019 Kumbh Mela religious festival. Ina Goel Laxmi Narayan Tripathi sat on…
Today, coffee is consumed everywhere in the world. Despite its neo-colonial forms of production, it is a drink which brings people together, but the consumption of coffee in…
In a cave tucked into the limestone hills of the Asturias region of Spain, there lie the remains of a group of 13 Neanderthals that date to between…
Down syndrome is typically caused by an error in cell division during fetal development, which results in an embryo with three copies of chromosome 21 instead of two. Marcel Hirshegger/SAPIEN…
Devotees gather for the Sufi ritual of dhikr in downtown Istanbul. Dimitris Xygalatas In downtown Istanbul, Turks in religious garb filter into a large, multistory building. Behind the…
One of the more tenacious misconceptions about Neanderthals is that they were exclusively meat eaters. Sure, in some of the colder regions of Europe plant food would have…
Shoes representing the estimated 7,000 U.S. children who were killed by gun violence since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting cover the Capitol lawn in 2018. Saul…
The human body is often visualized as a symmetrical form: Picture the geometric precision of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic drawing of a man’s proportions encased by a circle…
The human body is often visualized as a symmetrical form: Picture the geometric precision of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic drawing of a man’s proportions encased by a circle…
Yanesha’ women and girls participate in a right-of-passage ritual called ponapnora in the remote community of Puellas Yuncullmas. Anna Luisa Daigneault It was before dawn. I lay curled…
In 1856, a scattered collection of bones was found in the Feldhofer Cave of the Neander Valley in Germany. Scientists had never seen anything like it. The skull…
In Samoan communities, men traditionally receive a pe’a tattoo from mid-torso to knees as a marker of maturity. Sandra Mu/Getty Images In the 1800s, a chief in the…
A natural pharmacist at a complementary medicine clinic in Trujillo, Peru, displays a plant tincture. Jane Palmer Under the clear, moonlit sky of Friday, July 13, 2018, Elide…
Nahaan, a Tlingit-Inupiaq-Paiute tattoo artist, inks a woman’s face. Nahaan To celebrate her graduation from the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Native Studies program in 2012, Mar…
January 2019 marks the second anniversary of the Women’s March—a protest that arose in response to then U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump’s “locker room talk” and to the…
Every human has it. But nearly every human society sees it differently. Fat. What purpose does it serve? In this video, a collaboration between SAPIENS and Aeon, anthropological…
Jonathan Bethard’s life is anything but dull. He analyzes human remains to determine people’s identities, understand their lifeways, and figure out how they died. And while his work…
Fossilized tooth crowns hold lots of information about past climates and life events. Tanya M. Smith This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative…
Surprise! As a special holiday treat, the SAPIENS team is presenting this unedited conversation between SAPIENS host Chip Colwell and acclaimed science journalist Carl Zimmer about DNA, identity,…
Stanislawa Walasiewicz won the gold for Poland in the women’s 100-meter dash at the 1932 Olympic Games. Upon her death, an autopsy revealed that she had intersex traits.…
Babe, my grandpa, was born on the kitchen tiles of a small Seattle home. His dad, whose own grandpa had run a seedy downtown brothel, would disappear and…
This scanning electron micrograph (SEM) shows healthy spermatozoa emerging from a cavity within the testis. Innerspace Imaging/Getty Images This article was originally published at Aeon. …