What Is “Natural” for Human Sexual Relationships?
A biological and anthropological researcher explains how humans’ diverse ways of mating might have evolved. ✽ Marrying more than one person constitutes a crime across most of the…
A biological and anthropological researcher explains how humans’ diverse ways of mating might have evolved. ✽ Marrying more than one person constitutes a crime across most of the…
Does the transition from childhood to adulthood have to be so difficult? This question sent famed anthropologist Margaret Mead to American Samoa in 1925—and ignited decades of controversy.…
A famed anthropologist’s controversial research in American Samoa reveals the biggest questions about growing up and being human. This special SAPIENS podcast season, co-hosted by Doris Tulifau and…
In a new book, an anthropologist and father of three, including a daughter with Down syndrome, reflects on the pressures of parenting. Excerpted from An Ordinary Future: Margaret…
An archaeologist weighs the pros and cons driving debates around the rising population of Scotland’s renowned animal and explains what historical archaeology could add to the conversation. This…
Unraveling a mystery around millennia-old goat bones, an archaeologist reflects on the harm people can cause their most cherished animals. ✽ Animals were harmed in the making of…
Over years and across long distances, an international filmmaking team collaborated to bring to life the origin story of how agriculture came to Kayapó communities, Indigenous peoples in…
For decades, soldiers at the border between Attari, India, and Wagah, Pakistan, have staged an elaborate ceremony for onlookers. An anthropologist reflects on the ceremony as a legacy…
Archaeologists long abandoned the simple notion that “pots are people”—that people’s identities directly correspond with the pottery they made and used. What, then, can ceramics reveal about past…
Many people around the world fear spiders. But in the Philippines, the tradition of spider wrestling often brings people and arachnids in close proximity. ✽ A fear of…
An anthropologist moves from Canada to the U.K. and finds herself reflecting on what home design patterns reveal about a society. Excerpted from Silent but Deadly: The Underlying…
A poet exuberantly gives thanks for the Munay-Ki rites enlivened across the ages and shared by the Q’ero people in the Peruvian Andes. “A Love Letter to the…
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,”…
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…
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…
An archaeologist examines how community members in Cardiff, Wales, collaborated with a research team to make important insights into the Bronze Age. This article was originally published at…
A sqilxʷ poet and artist who currently lives in Mohkínstsis, Treaty 7 in Canada speaks to their grandmother of longing and connection, wanting to wake up the medicine…
Poet-anthropologist Jason Vasser-Elong revitalizes stories of interwoven lineages of his African-descent ancestors and those who were Native American. The Woods Lament For Me – Listen —For Will…
Paleogenomic research has expanded rapidly over the past two decades, igniting heated debates about handling human remains. Who gives consent for the ancient subjects of studies—and who should…
A poet of the Indigenous Lepcha community of the Eastern Himalayas ponders how to draw maps of the mind, heart, and soul that show her community’s heartland—an “eternal…
Three contributors to a special series reflect on why slowing down and building trust between community partners is fundamental to decolonizing anthropology—and our shared future. This contribution is…
An anthropologist considers how different the world might be if Neanderthals—and hence, their ways of navigating relationships with the environment and one another—had survived the gauntlet of evoluti…
In this upcoming free live event, SAPIENS 2022 Poet-in-Residence Jason Vasser-Elong celebrates the end of his residency with a discussion of poetry as a dialogue across the ages.…
In a new book, Growing Up Human, a bioarchaeologist chronicles some of the most surprising evolutionary adaptations of babies, parents, and grandparents. This article is excerpted and adapted…