SAPIENS – Anthropology Magazine

Anthropology Magazine

A person lies in bed next to a smartphone displaying numbers and symbols.

Are Insomniacs Overthinking Sleep?

Cultural Relativity

A photograph features a group of women dressed in green camo uniforms looking toward their right with stern expressions on their faces.

When Women Answer the Call of Duty

Outside the migrant shelter, a Central American migrant boils water in a Coke bottle for his morning coffee. He carefully adjusts the bottle lid to prevent the water from boiling over or the plastic from burning. Bringing few objects with them on their journey, migrants rely on creative uses of found and recycled items in order to fulfill basic needs.

A person with dark curly hair and a person wearing a black hat lean through and over blue metal bars and use white tools to flatten and smooth painted fabric on a concrete wall.

Eight pictures of Queen Elizabeth II at various ages appear on eight monoliths of Stonehenge, set against a dark-blue sky.

A person in a scuba suit hovers underwater above a cluster of large vases covered with algae and moss resting on the sea floor.

A person with many small, long, black braids tied up and flowing down their back looks out onto the water.

An ad hoc tattoo shop opens on the train tracks. This diversion facilitates a brief moment of intimacy between two Central American men who make a living off of smuggling, and sometimes robbing, migrants.

Although they are in the process of migrating, these migrants are not wholly defined by their participation in this clandestine activity. During their brief stays in this shelter in Pakal-Na, people find creative and resourceful ways to pass the time. This includes playing music, swapping stories, or, in the case of the men in the photo, inventing a game out of discarded plastic bottle caps. These diversions help take migrants’ minds off what has already happened to them or what lies ahead.

Shame has long been considered maladaptive in the field of psychology, but a new study suggests that shame likely has evolutionary benefits, such as helping protect people from negative reactions to breaking cultural norms.

Men munch on sugarcane after a morning of work in the large communal garden below the main village of Boti. Everyone is expected to help in the communal garden, as well as tend to their own, every day. The garden grows sugarcane, cassava, bananas, and coconut trees as well as other herbs and vegetables.

Ancestral Puebloans started living in the Pecos Valley, east of Santa Fe, in A.D. 800. By A.D. 1300, the pueblo consisted of 700 rooms with over 1,500 inhabitants. Pecos shows the use and reuse of timber over time, which is of particular interest to archaeologists because it gives us a relative chronology of human habitation on the landscape. Recent National Park Service reconstructions of the original kivas at Pecos, such as the one shown here, have become new tourist attractions.

Zabi is originally from the Parwan province in Afghanistan. He was the first of his family to make the journey to Belgium, having arrived in 1999. He currently owns and operates a night shop in the south of the city; two of his brothers also own shops—one a news agent and the other a food store—in Antwerp.

The photograph features a large recreated model of a neanderthal.

Since the 1920s, scientists have debated whether the first Americans arrived from Asia—or somewhere else—some 11,000 years ago, or millennia before. Artifacts such as this Clovis spear point have provided some clues, but new multidisciplinary research is filling in the picture.

Olympics Zika - The World Health Organization stated that there was “no public health justification” to postpone the 2016 Rio Olympics due to the Zika virus. Is the fear of Zika at the games overblown?

Gift economy - Gift giving, such as during weddings in southern India, is an essential part of many relationships and ceremonies across the world.

Twinship - Sameness is often seen as the defining characteristic of identical twins, but this impression is a result of Western stereotypes about the meaning of selfhood.

Native American Activism - Native Americans from many different tribes have unified behind the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s protest in North Dakota against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. The controversial pipeline raises numerous cultural and environmental issues, ranging from tribal rights to climate change.

Yardenit Baptismal

amazon gold mining

prison labor

Autism human evolution - Some cave paintings, such as these from Chauvet Cave in southern France, show characteristics that are also commonly expressed by some autistic artists.

Two Native American archaeology students conduct research in Petrified Forest National Park in June 2015 as part of a field school project.

Research suggests that parents who choose to vaccinate their children often do so out of adherence to their own upbringing and personal experience, rather than as a result of a deeper understanding of the science behind immunization.

In Mexico City, critics created a piñata in response to Donald Trump’s claims that many Mexican immigrants to the United States bring drugs and crime, and that many are rapists. Such rhetoric has put the Republican party in a political and moral bind.

Cultural heritage - Palmyra was attacked by ISIS in 2015. The Arch of Triumph, shown here the way it looked before the attack, was almost completely destroyed. Many referred to the destruction as “cultural genocide.”

The Sumatran rainforest—one of only four primate biodiversity hotspots—faces rampant environmental destruction, fueled in part by recent massive wildfires, unchecked deforestation and unsustainable agriculture.

Immigrants and refugees have been the target of Tea Partyists’ and Trump supporters’ anger and fear.

Rwandan Genocide rescuers - Compassion and a shared sense of humanity motivated many rescuers to put their lives on the line to save others during the killings.

Senegal wrestling drug testing - The sport’s magico-religious rituals, such as wrestlers pouring specially prepared potions and liquids over their heads before a competition, carry meaning and power.

Kashmir Justice

At the site of an old Moroccan mine, paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin (pictured) points to one of the oldest Homo sapiens fossils yet found.

Agustín Rivas Vázquez (pictured here), an ayahuasquero, or plant medicine specialist, manages a lodge near Tamshiyacu, Peru.

Cally Steussy and Meriah Dainard clean animal bones recovered at the Hamanaka II site with toothbrushes in a school gym.

In the woods, a man wearing a tan shirt, jeans, and cowboy hat holds a long pronged metal spear in his left hand and pulls a gun out from the back of his pants with his right hand. A long machete in a case hangs from his belt.

An empty sandy desert sits below a darkening sky with yellow from the sun peeking through.

Two hands hold a book whose cover reads, "The Great Seal of the Chickasaw Nation; A Chickasaw Dictionary compiled by Jessie Humes and Vinnie May (James) Humes"

The photograph features a person with a hearing aid sitting next to a person smiling on a couch. They face each other and communicate using sign language.

A photo features blocks of wood put together in such a way that you can see the rings of the trees they were made from.MirageC/

Misperceiving Life Expectancy in the Deep Past

Expanding worlds by exploring everything human.

A landscape photo features dense buildings on a hillside under blue skies, with a mountain range in the background.

What Is Freedom in a Brazilian Favela?

A wooden medicine cabinet on a wooden table displays numerous clear and green medicine bottles.

Finding Mental Health Issues Hidden in the Past

An adult and three children huddle by a grassy hill in the dark with a tall wire fence in the background.

Archaeology at the Borders of the Refugee Crisis

A photograph features a parade with people in the front holding up gold balloons that spell out “Disney” and those behind holding mouse-head–shaped balloons in rainbow colors.

What’s Behind the Backlash to Lightyear’s Animated Kiss?

A tall, stair-step pyramid of beige stone in the distance towers over other stone ruins, with its top level plateauing just under a light-blue sky with white clouds.

What Ended This Hub of Ancient Maya Life?

A close-up image features an open book with visible text that reads, “Descent of Man.” Around it are a pair of yellow glasses, a hand-drawn schematic, a rolled tie, a harmonica, and a slide rule.

Excavating My Dad’s Life

In front of a window in a dark room, a pen rests on an open notebook on a desk. Yellow sunlight shines through the window and causes a glare.

What Is Anthropological Poetry?

A painting on a wall shows two people holding a basket containing two infants next to a river.

An Archaeology of Personhood and Abortion

Cultural Relativity

A photograph features a rocky landscape white with snow under a light-blue sky.

A Reader’s Question About Surviving the Ice Age

Peeling Back the Myth of a “White” Midwest

A crowd of people gather, with those in the front row reaching out to take green peppers from a pink colander.

Why Do (Some) Humans Love Chili Peppers?

The photograph features a person with a hearing aid sitting next to a person smiling on a couch. They face each other and communicate using sign language.

How Deaf and Hearing Friends Co-Navigate the World

A woman in a forest stands in front of a large tree trunk and looks up at the treetops.

The Problems of Evolution as a “March of Progress”

A bouquet of red roses rests on top of a wooden coffin in a church under a stained-glass window.

We All Love Roses

An illustration in color shows ancient humans painting mammoths on a cave wall.

Did Neanderthals Make Art?

A photo shows a statue of cast metal figures resembling several human beings in a line, most from the chin up, and the center one from the bust up. They all have their eyes closed and arms raised.

How a Coerced Confession Shaped a Family History

A Songhay man carries firewood in a desert and looks down a sandy hill at a mudbrick hut.

Wisdom From the Winding Path

A man wearing a white durag and lime-green tank top props a young boy in a gray T-shirt and jeans on his shoulders while holding a pink rose from a rose bush to his nose.

What the Anthropology of Smell Reveals About Humanity

A close-up shot shows a hand gripping a live bullfrog by its back legs.

Looking Into the World of Frog Gigging

An arched cobblestone corridor with a floor of packed dirt reaches into the distance. Green leafy shrubbery covers the right side of the entryway.

Difficult Truths: Confronting Irish Industrial Schools

Two black and brown triangular stones face each other against a black background and are lit from above.

What Ancient Stone “Swiss Army Knives” Mean

Material Culture

A red bus is parked under a digital street sign that reads “via downtown” and two smaller street signs, each written in a different language.

What Klingon and Other Constructed Languages Reveal

Eight pictures of Queen Elizabeth II at various ages appear on eight monoliths of Stonehenge, set against a dark-blue sky.

Stop Projecting Nationalism Onto Stonehenge

A seated woman with short hair gestures with her hands and speaks into a large rectangular microphone positioned in front of her on a table.

Did Margaret Mead Think a Healed Femur Was the Earliest Sign of Civilization?

Rain falls down a glass window in front of a blurred background of red and yellow lights.

Living With the Prospect of Assisted Dying

A seated woman in green medical scrubs holds a cotton ball and sits in front of a masked patient, who faces her with his arm extended.

Is Donated Blood a Gift or a Commodity?

Four large ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs are engraved on the wall of a temple with columns in the background.

Can Machine Learning Translate Ancient Egyptian Texts?

Lost in Translation

The photo shows a green landscape as seen from inside a cave, with a wooden structure built against the right side of the opening.

What the Discovery of Denisovan Remains in Laos Means

A person with many small, long, black braids tied up and flowing down their back looks out onto the water.

Maize and Okra

A light-brown cross section of a tree shows narrow and wide tree rings.

Tree Rings Are Evidence of the Megadrought—and Our Doom

A person with dark curly hair and a person wearing a black hat lean through and over blue metal bars and use white tools to flatten and smooth painted fabric on a concrete wall.

Crystal Worl’s Countermural Tells a Different History of Alaska

A person in a scuba suit hovers underwater above a cluster of large vases covered with algae and moss resting on the sea floor.

Five Turning Points in the Evolution of Wine

A landscape photo shows brown and green long and short grasses growing in and on top of still water.

Cooking Debris in an Australian Cave Tells a Story of Resilience

Grocery store shelves are shown packed with colorful cereal boxes adorned with cartoon animals and children, as well as labels in Spanish and English.

Do Children Need Special Foods?

An adult and three children stand next to a large beige mammoth skull with a hole in the center and two shiny tusks.

The Deep Human Story of Collecting Fossils

A black script is shown on sepia tone paper with a tear at the top.

What the Vai Script Reveals About the Evolution of Writing

Reddish-brown stone cylinders sit in a square stone courtyard in front of a wall.

Here’s How to Make Olive Oil Like an Ancient Egyptian

A group of people, some of whom wear white necklaces and white feather headpieces, stand in front of buildings with metal roofs and hold a large, colorful map.

Indigenous Mapmaking, or Bringing a Dead Map to Life

(RE)THINK HUMAN

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