The Problems of Evolution as a “March of Progress”
The idea that evolution is a hierarchy of complexity with humans on top lurks in everything from biology classes to politics. It’s time to unlearn this false and…
The idea that evolution is a hierarchy of complexity with humans on top lurks in everything from biology classes to politics. It’s time to unlearn this false and…
An anthropologist digs into the origins of a popular story attributed to Margaret Mead about the original sign of civilization. ✽ According to a commonly shared story, the…
According to a commonly shared story, the anthropologist Margaret Mead was supposedly asked by a student what she thought was the earliest sign of a civilized society. There…
The Tam Ngu Hao 2 Cave in Laos held Denisovan remains—the first ever found in Southeast Asia, showing the expansive geographical reach of this hominin species. Fabrice Demeter/University…
This handwritten example of Vai script dates to around 1850. British Library/Wikimedia Commons In a small West African village, a man named Momolu Duwalu Bukele had a compelling…
The belief that males are aggressive while females are nurturing is a dangerous myth. Evgeny Tchebotarev/Pexels Excerpted from the second edition of Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They…
Descriptions of hair have long been knotted with false notions of race, but new research points to empowering ways of viewing this emotionally charged physical trait. D3sign/Getty Images …
Deep voices, like singer Barry White’s bass-baritone, are seen as appealing across a variety of cultures and sexual identities. POP-EYE/ullstein bild/Getty Images For many people, Barry W…
The idea of crafting and using beads as ornamentation may have spread from North Africa outward to other parts of the African continent and to Europe. Nicholas R.…
Richard Leakey and his teams’ fossil discoveries profoundly shaped our knowledge of human origins. Keith Beaty/Toronto Star/Getty Images On January 2, paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey d…
[no-caption] Henrik Sorensen/Getty Images Excerpted from The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. © 2021 by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Reprinted with permission from Farra…
Join us LIVE for a 25-minute Q&A with archaeologist and author David Wengrow to discuss his New York Times bestselling book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of…
The author wears an outfit he made using ancient tools, methods, and materials while filming the National Geographic TV show The Great Human Race in Alaska. Brent Meske/Courtesy…
Hand axes crafted by Homo erectus required skills and planning—and likely, generational knowledge. Nick Longrich This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been rep…
The ‘Ubeidiya site today is an expanse of grasses. Concealed from this view are slabs of fossilized pebbly clay, a source of ancient finds that have helped scholars…
We’re so used to the idea of being the only people around that it seems outlandish to think that not so long ago in our evolutionary history, multiple…
[no-caption] Vincent van Gogh/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at Knowable Magazine and has been republished under Creative Commons. Lee Gettler is hard to get on t…
I have passed my qualifying exams and so am making my essays available on my blog. The other essays can be found: Attending to Animals in Anthropology and…
[no-caption] Chuang Zhao This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. In 1933, a mysterious fossil skull was discovered near …
[no-caption] DrAfter123/Getty Images Something about me must remind people of a blind 17th-century poet. My last name, Miton, is French, yet people outside of France invariably misspell i…
United States Olympic athlete Kara Winger competes in the women’s javelin throw in 2019. Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images With the Tokyo Olympics on the horizon, Kara Winger is trainin…
This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. An international group of archaeologists has discovered a missing piece in the story…
Except for humans, every great ape is endangered—many at great risk of going extinct. There are fewer than 300,000 chimpanzees living in the wild. USAID Africa Bureau/Wikimedia Commons…
This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. Africa is often referred to as the cradle of humankind—the birthplace of our…