Why Can’t Most Humans Drink Milk?
[no-caption] Axel Schmidt/Getty Images This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. A solid white mass found in a broken jar …
Tag: history
The Mastodon in the Room
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Humans may have been in North America much earlier than previously thought. Here’s the evidence: chipped rocks, crushed mastodon bones, and reliable da…
Truth of History
This title is nearly an oxymoron. There are historic truths, but what we known of history is an invention of mostly people who did not personally experience that…
How Do We Know Which Historical Accounts Are True?
It all started with a stray goat. On an otherwise nondescript day in the spring of 1947, a young Bedouin boy searched for a goat that had strayed…
The End of the World As We Know It
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Listen to the companion episode of SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human! Back in 2008, Chad Huddleston was driving home from work when he saw a stra…
The what and the why of Discard Studies
We tend to think that we are familiar with waste because we deal with it every day. Yet, this is not the case–most aspects of waste are entirely…
The Hidden Resilience of “Food Desert” Neighborhoods
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Even before Ashanté Reese and I reach the front gate, retired schoolteacher Alice Chandler is standing in the doorway of her brick home in Washington,…
As Seas Rise, Ancient Footprints Are Revealed
Archaeologists are uncovering footprints on beaches from Canada to South Africa. The oldest human footprints, one of which is shown here, were found in Tanzania and date back…
Why Are Some Caves Full of Shoes?
I’ve spent a good chunk of my life hiking the U.S. Southwest, and I’ve kicked my share of sharp rocks and prickly cactuses as I’ve walked across hot…
Meal Kits: Our Culinary Future?
Amy B. Trubek, University of Vermont Americans spend more and more money on food prepared outside the home, and every day cooking becomes more episodic and less…
The Incas’ Knotty History
Khipu in the Museo Machu Picchu, Casa Concha, Cusco. Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at Aeon. The Inca Empire (1400–1532) is one of few ancient civilizations that …
Politics by Other Means: Health in Việt Nam by Martha Lincoln
My research in Việt Nam addresses how medicine, health, and disease function as political and cultural signifiers as well as telegraphing – in the form of epidemiological data…
Biology, Race, and “Orientalism”
Edward Said published Orientalism in 1978 and is highly influential, both in post-colonial studies and social theory. Said argues that through the construction of the ‘Orient’ (the East) a…
How Cutting-Edge Archaeology Can Improve Public Health
[no-caption] Megan Brickley Twenty years ago, I held in my hands the leg bones of a 2-year-old child who had died in Birmingham in the early 1800s. They…
The Myth of Racial Purity in Roman Britain
This model at the Museum of London depicts the first bridge over the River Thames, which was built by the Romans in the first century. Steven G. Johnson/Wikimedia…
Land, Labour & Society in Aceh: Chandra Jayawardena’s unpublished fieldnotes
This post is a little outside our usual mandate, but we are intrigued by the idea that Professor Robinson proposes: an interactive online project she is working on…
Cancer Culture avant la lettre by Vincent Bruyère
Figure 1. Two views of Clara Jacobi (Netherlands, 1689). U.S. National Library of Medicinehttps://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101392944-img In the class I teach on illness narratives, c…
Sharon Batt’s Health Advocacy Inc. How Pharmaceutical Funding Changed the Breast Cancer Movement by Grazia De Michele
Health Advocacy Inc. How Pharmaceutical Funding Changed the Breast Cancer Movement Sharon Batt UBC Press, 2017, 383 pages After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988, Sharon…
Populations, Race, and The Sorites Paradox
The sorites paradox (also called the paradox of the heap) refers to a particular logical contradiction that arises from the analysis of vague terms (Sainsbury, 2009). Terms like…
Omar Dewachi’s Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq by Anna Zogas
Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq Omar Dewachi Stanford University Press, 2017. 239 pp. Every year, tens of thousands of Iraqi patients leave their country…
Why the Present Matters: The Importance of Community Outreach and Public Engagement in Archaeology
The authors with [Reef Radio TV Productions] host, Eiden Salazar and Camera Tech, Kainie Manuel, after being interviewed on the Good Morning San Pedro Show. Courtesy of Tracie…
Before Farm to Table Fellowships
See below for information on semester-long fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library on early modern foodways. Follow the links for instructions on how to apply. Before Farm to Table: Early…
Book Review: Not in Our Genes
I’ve been slacking on writing book reviews and so I need to get back to it so the next several posts will be just that (unless something happens…
Science as a Structure of Violence
The study of human diversity and subsequent racialisation of people has been examined and critiqued but has escaped interrogation as an institution by which structural violence is enacted.…