Spend a Day Tracking Chimpanzees
A series of short videos captures a rare view into the lives of wild chimps through the eyes of a researcher. ✽ Some see chimpanzees as invariably belligerent…
Tag: communication
Writing Indigenous Oral Tradition to Fight a Dam
In the northern Philippines, the Isnag are documenting their Traditional Stories to sustain their culture and fight a legal battle against dams that would inundate their homelands. ✽…
Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.” ✽ “Insult me,”…
The Rebellion Recorded on the Rosetta Stone
An archaeologist explains how recent archaeological finds in Egypt expand our knowledge of a violent revolt discussed on the now-famous Rosetta Stone. This article was originally published at…
Twitter’s Blue Tick Is a Fake Signal
Evolutionary theory can help us better understand the recent debacle about social media platforms’ popular symbol as a signaling problem. This article was originally published at The Conversati…
Dating Apps Can Gauge Attraction but Not Chemistry
Why do attraction and chemistry feel different in the digital age? The answer lies in how digitally mediated information is changing the way we come to know potential…
Who Pays the Price When Cochlear Implants Go Obsolete?
Some cochlear implant users can’t afford to keep up with compulsory technology upgrades. After becoming dependent on the devices, they’re losing their hearing and feel abandoned by manufacturers.…
Five Highlights From the 2023 RAI Film Festival
This March, SAPIENS is partnering with the Royal Anthropological Institute’s RAI Film Festival to celebrate anthropological documentaries. ✽ The art of anthropological documentary filmmaking is thriv…
What Do Archaeologists Do?
Archaeologists use a wide variety of methods to explore a fascinating range of topics about human history, culture, and behavior. Here’s an overview of the ways archaeologists preserve…
A Tree’s Tongue
A Nigerian poet-anthropologist witnesses the powerful rising up of ancestors through the revival of a tree in the Igbo village of Ogbodu. “A Tree’s Tongue” is part of…
Indigenizing What It Means to Be Human
SAPIENS offers a curated collection of poems and stories that center Indigenous values, worldviews, and insights, creatively reimagining anthropology and the human experience. ✽ Anthropology’s fraugh…
What Commentators Get Wrong (and Right) About North Korea
An anthropologist argues that unfair portrayals of North Korea as a hopelessly irrational hermit state has huge implications for policy and security. ✽ This month, North Korea tested…
What Is Linguistic Anthropology?
Linguistic anthropologists study language in context, revealing how people’s ways of communicating and expressing themselves interact with human culture, history, politics, identity, and much more. W…
Ethnography.com launches on Youtube thanks to Chinese Smartphones in Africa
Greetings Ethnography.com aficionados! My previous post “What Happens if Chinese Smartphones Teach English Lessons in Tanzania?” is now on Youtube. Keeping up with the times, Tony and I…
Why AI Will Never Fully Capture Human Language
Researchers in artificial intelligence have made extraordinary strides in mimicking human language—but they still can’t capture the parts that truly make language human. ✽ The story begins with…
What Happens if Chinese Smartphones Teach English Lessons in Tanzania?
English is the dominant global language of the world, it is the language of power, and control. But it is not the only language, and different people have…
Derogatory Place Names Need Indigenous Revision
Changing offensive place names on public lands is a strong move toward decolonization. But to heal relationships and address ecological crises, non-Native people must do more. ✽ On…
What Is Cultural Anthropology?
Cultural anthropologists seek to understand the dizzyingly diverse ways people live today, including how they think, act, create, struggle, make meaning, and organize their societies. WHAT IS CULTURAL…
What Is Anthropological Poetry?
SAPIENS’ poetry editor and inaugural poet-in-residence break down what makes certain poems anthropological and explore how poetry has the potential to transform ways of thinking and being in…
How Deaf and Hearing Friends Co-Navigate the World
For deaf people in the U.S., accessibility has become synonymous with provisioning professional sign language interpreters. But in everyday life, deaf people’s experiences of “access” often include mo…
What Klingon and Other Constructed Languages Reveal
At a Comic-Con, or comic book convention, in Los Angeles in 2010, the trolley signs were in Klingon. Doug Kline/The Pop Culture Geek Network/Flickr This article was originally…
What Klingon and Other Constructed Languages Reveal
This article was originally published at Knowable Magazine and has been republished with Creative Commons. Most languages develop through centuries of use among groups of people. But some…
Stop Projecting Nationalism Onto Stonehenge
English Heritage beamed eight portraits of Queen Elizabeth II onto Stonehenge, sparking controversy among archaeologists and the general public. Raj Valley/Alamy In late May, eight images…
Stop Projecting Nationalism Onto Stonehenge
In late May, eight images of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II were projected onto the megaliths of Stonehenge to celebrate the monarch’s 70 years on the throne.…