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…
Tag: relationships
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…
Extraordinary Lessons From a Community-Led Excavation
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 love letter to my qáqnaʔ
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…
The Woods Lament For Me
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…
Navigating the Ethics of Ancient DNA Research
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…
Mayel Lyang
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…
Planting Seeds for a More Ethical Future
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…
What If Neanderthals Had Outlived Homo Sapiens?
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…
Rhyme & Reason: Poetry as a Cultural and Communal Bridge
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.…
Monogamy. Grandmas. Milk. The Evolution of Childhood Is Very Strange.
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…
Do Mountains Have Souls?
An anthropologist explores the resurgence of “new Animism”—interest in spiritual practices that recognize the interrelationships among animals, places, plants, and people. This article was originally…
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…
The Family Lives of the Last Neanderthals
Two anthropologists explain a novel genetic analysis of ancient DNA and artifacts that suggests Neanderthals in Siberia lived in close-knit communities. This article was originally published at The C…
Purple in Cycles
A poet-anthropologist speaks to the labyrinthine experiences of domestic violence—the entrapment, the hope for freedom. ✽ During the final week of domestic violence awareness month in October, I…
Unsung Native Collaborators in Anthropology
Anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Margaret Mead could not have achieved success without their local assistants’ insider knowledge and extensive labor. ✽ Growing up a Brown girl…
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…
Excavating My Dad’s Life
An archaeologist navigates her dad’s passing by using the methods of her discipline to preserve his office and gain insight into the mysteries of his personality. ✽ 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…
Difficult Truths: Confronting Irish Industrial Schools
[no-caption] Matt Anderson Photography/Getty Images This article was originally published at Otherwise magazine and has been republished with permission as a lightly edited excerpt. CONST…
Difficult Truths: Confronting Irish Industrial Schools
This article was originally published at Otherwise magazine and has been republished with permission as a lightly edited excerpt. CONSTELLATIONS The 1918 Spanish flu altered the course of…
What Ancient Stone “Swiss Army Knives” Mean
Multipurpose ancient stone tools harbor more clues about human sociality than initially meet the eye. Paloma de la Peñ This article was originally published in The Conversation and…
What Ancient Stone “Swiss Army Knives” Mean
This article was originally published in The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. Humans are the only species to live in every environmental niche in the…
Living With the Prospect of Assisted Dying
Excerpted from The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America by Anita Hannig. © 2022 by Anita Hannig. Used with permission of the publisher,…