A Brief Lindbergh Update
One of my more popular posts of late has been The Fall and Rise of Lindbergh: A Javelina Story. In that post, I tell the story of a…
Tag: Science
Why Are Black People’s Remains in Museums?
Many U.S. museums, including those housed at Harvard University, collected and currently still store human remains. Smith Collection/Gado/Archive Photos via Getty Images This article was …
How Scientific Taxonomy Constructed the Myth of Race
[no-caption] Hiroshi Watanabe/Getty Images As a graduate assistant in biological anthropology at the University at Buffalo, I was tasked with curating the primate skeletal collection. The…
Contested Truths over COVID-19 in Africa: Introduction by Jia Hui Lee
One of the most significant challenges to confronting and mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic concerns the manufacturing, circulation, and interpretation of what we call “contested truths.” By this term…
What’s Behind Match Day’s Algorithm?
The opening of Match Day letters at medical schools across the U.S., including Penn State College of Medicine (shown here), has become an annual rite of passage. Penn…
The Fall and Rise and Lindbergh: A Javelina Story
I have been working with javelinas in Texas for nearly a year. My first encounter with them occurred at Big Bend National Park and I have since visited…
Did a Magnetic Field Reversal Doom Neanderthals?
I remember exactly where I was when I first learned about magnetic field reversals: sitting in a lab as an undergraduate student in a geoarchaeology class. I knew…
Why Write for SAPIENS?
In the summer of 1960, Jane Goodall left England for what is now Gombe National Park in Tanzania. With the aid of legendary paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, Goodall was…
The Phantom Forests That Built Mesa Verde
Mesa Verde National Park (MVNP) in what is today southwestern Colorado is a UNESCO World Heritage site dedicated to the preservation and presentation of the amazing cliff dwellings…
Mapping Human and Neanderthal Genomes
Back in 1990, researchers embarked on an epic project to map out all of human DNA: the Human Genome Project. Their first draft of the human genome was…
Is Love a Biological Reality?
Helen Fisher knows more about love than most. As a biological anthropologist who studies the topic, she has been a chief scientific adviser to the internet dating site…
Fields of Vision: On Biodynamic Farming, Ecological Entanglement, and the Nature of Knowledge
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2020 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline…
Time to Rethink Teeth
Tooth enamel growth starts before birth and continues until adult teeth are fully formed. Ksenia Chernaya/Pexels Four years ago, I found myself cataloguing some dusty containers of about…
Covid-19, Nordic trust and collective denial: Sweden and Norway compared
In March 2020, as the pandemic strengthened its grip around Europe and the world, I wondered how I would manage my weekly work commute from Stockholm to Oslo…
How to “Co-Live” With a Natural Hazard
Tungurahua, an active volcano in Ecuador, sits amid farming communities that have dwelled alongside it for generations. A.J. Faas As the Andes mountain range curves through Ecuador, it…
What a “Safe and Dignified” Burial Means During a Pandemic
Bamileke community members typically mourn the deaths of loved ones through drumming, singing, and other collective rituals. Bobyphoto/Wikimedia Commons A few months into the pandemic, a …
Partnering with Nonhumans for Climate Action
Arctic sea ice is breaking up and melting as the world’s atmosphere and waters warm. Julianne Yip Arctic sea ice is dying: Its extent, volume, and thickness have…
What Did the Stone Age Sound Like?
Archaeologists Joshua Kumbani (left) and Sarah Wurz (right) work at a site near the Klasies River in South Africa. Joshua Kumbani On South Africa’s southern coast, above the…
Shadows, Ambiguity, and More-Than-Human Politics
My first glimpse of a peccary/javelina at one of my fieldsites. I am currently working on a manuscript exploring the ways that both literal and metaphorical shadows produce…
What Human Hair Reveals About Death’s Seasonality
A lock of hair from Edith Cook, a girl who died in 1876, offers a window into her death. Jelmer Eerkens Each wave of Edith Howard Cook’s reddish-blonde…
When You Can’t Look Away: Seeing and Difference in American Medicine
Juliet When I interviewed her, Juliet was a third-year medical student and a dedicated member of her medical school’s interest groups on social justice. I interviewed her because…
Ancient Beer Is Craft’s New Frontier
Ancient artwork, such as this relief in the Israel Beer Breweries museum in Ashkelon, Israel, offers clues to past beer production. Alamy One morning in May 2019, a…
What If There Is Life on Venus?
In the throes of a pandemic that has underscored the fragility of human life on Earth, news has come of possible life on another planet, with the detection…
Early Humans Controlled Fire to Make Stone Tools
Researchers found these ancient flint blades in Israel’s Qesem Cave. Filipe Natalio Humanity’s creation and mastery of fire likely came in stages. Being able to reliably kindle this…