SAPIENS – Anthropology Magazine

Anthropology Magazine

A close-up photograph features a sculpture depicting a person wearing a headwrap and dress leaning on a tombstone at a gravesite etched with the numbers “1941–1945.”

When Life Imitates Art in Ukraine

From below, a photograph features a person in a brown fur coat attaching a large ice block to an in-progress igloo from inside, with a blue sky above.

How Ancient Humans Came to Cope With the Cold

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The photograph features a large recreated model of a neanderthal.

prison labor

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 zoomed-out photograph features white-capped mountains towering in the distance against a blue sky with light clouds. Flags of different colors and dark, sparse shrubbery are in the foreground.

Mayel Lyang

Expanding worlds by exploring everything human.

A photograph features several people wearing caps, sports jackets, khaki pants, and rainboots gathered on a mountainside plot of dirt, grass, and trees. Several are carrying wooden sticks.

When Disaster Tests the Strength of Human Cooperation

A photograph features a group of people in patterned clothing gathered on a sandy plot with domed huts visible in the distance. In front, two people dance as others cheer.

Did Humanity Really Arise in One Place?

A photograph features two people kneeling by buckets and working to clean a tiled mosaic on the ground.

Piecing Together History From a Roman Mosaic

A photograph features a large desert plain scattered with brush and cacti with a sun setting behind a distant horizon lined with mountains.

Rock Drawings

A photograph features a square area of concrete tiling in a park’s center with bench seating around its perimeter. At the center of the square is a stone statue of a man’s bust covered in red paint.

To Decolonize, We Must End the World as We Know It

A photograph features a large body of water with a cityscape visible in the distance. On the left side, a person stands on a wooden pier near a white sign that reads: “PLEASE KEEP YOUR PIER CLEAN. USE TRASH CANS.”

Planting Seeds for a More Ethical Future

A photograph features a dark scene with red light shining from the left to silhouette a crowd of people under an overhanging tree. In the center, a person wearing hoop earrings and a head wrap poses in front of a projected illustration of a person in a white dress and head wrap.

Centering Black Lives in the Study of Human Remains

A photograph features a large crowd inside an atrium holding up flyers emblazoned with capitalized red text that reads “Decolonize This Museum.”

Embracing the Poetry of Being Human

A photograph features the corner of a large bookcase filled with books. The books’ various multicolored covers evoke patterns common on African wax print fabrics.

Can Anthropology Be Decolonized?

A photograph features a large tree fully topped with green leaves along the side of a dirt road and in front of an iron and concrete fence that encloses green grass. A car is partially visible in the foreground, and beige buildings lie in the background.

A Tree’s Tongue

Indigenizing What It Means to Be Human

A photograph features a wax figure of a seated person with a large nose and broad jaw wearing a gray collared button-up shirt under a suit jacket of a darker gray shade. Their body is angled left as they look into the distance.

What If Neanderthals Had Outlived Homo Sapiens?

A photograph features a person wearing a collared shirt and apron in a large kitchen pouring coffee from a kettle into one of several white mugs on a wooden counter.

When Coffee Is Like Angel Cake With Strawberry Jam

Rhyme & Reason: Poetry as a Cultural and Communal Bridge

A large, sheep-shaped stone with etchings on its side sits on grass alongside a road where a car speeds by in a blur of orange lights.

How Gravestones Shaped as Sheep United the Caucasus

A photograph features a person wearing torn beige clothing kneeling in the front of a cave over a stone, rubbing wooden sticks together atop the latter to create sparks. Another brown-haired person in beige clothing is barely visible in the background on the right side of the image.

The Paleolithic Age Cooked Up Creative Chefs

A photograph features a narrow street lined with tall white and beige buildings. Left of the photo’s center, a large telephone pole has numerous wires extending from it.

In Lebanon, Solar Power Is Booming. Why?

A photograph features a seaside cluster of small white and teal boats filled with miscellaneous objects parked on the sand around white plastic chairs. The chairs are arranged around a wooden table that holds jars, cups, and bowls.

Fishing in the Shadow of Oil

A photograph features a hand holding a ripe red strawberry.

Is a “Sweet Tooth” Genetic?

A battalion of soldiers gather around a cannon firing a missile that leaves a plume of smoke in its wake.

Is War Inevitable? Consider the Ancient Maya

From an aerial perspective, a photograph features a large circular garden with green shrubs crisply pruned into arc shapes oriented to form a maze. A gazebo topped with similar greenery sits at the maze’s center.

Best of SAPIENS 2022

A black-and-white photograph features four people in a discussion, with three casually dressed facing one who has their hair pinned up and wears a white-collared dress. The latter speaks and points to a flyer on the wall.

A Native Alaska Community’s Reckoning With Vaccine Hesitancy

A photograph features a man walking in a shadowy forest with sun shining in from the right side. He has disheveled brown hair and a beard, wears a fur pelt, and holds a wooden spear with a stone tip.

Did Meat Do Neanderthals In?

A photograph features a large building with four pillars across its front side. Between the pillars hang three long banners of people’s portraits alternately separated by yellow banners that read “Native Truths,” “Our Voices,” Our Stories” and “Native Truths.”

A Major Museum’s Attempt to Center Native American Voices

A photograph features a brown stone staircase lined with rough walls of similar stone. A bright yellow light illuminates the far side of a tunnel-like perspective toward the staircase’s top end.

The Dangers of Ancient Apocalypse’s Pseudoscience

A photograph features five people in colorful clothing standing on cement tiles in front of tall trees and green grass.

How a Song Bridged Diné and Ndebele Worlds

A photograph shows, through glass, a person with short black hair wearing glasses, a necklace, and a black shirt pointing at a graphic of stick figures. Different clusters of stick people interact in different scenarios as various red lines surround them, with several lines intersecting at a central node.

How Diverse Was Medieval Britain?

A photograph shows a crying person using a red cane to prop themselves up as they kneel in front of an assortment of flower bouquets, burning candles, and balloons arranged neatly on a sidewalk.

A Mass Shooting in the “Evangelical Vatican”

A child wearing a plaid shirt and a beanie looks up and holds the hand of an adult wearing jeans and a plaid shirt but whose head isn’t visible. They stand next to a cholla cactus.

Monogamy. Grandmas. Milk. The Evolution of Childhood Is Very Strange.

A crowd faces a large outdoor screen showing video of a nuclear missile launching into a blue sky. Several buses are visible in the background.

What Commentators Get Wrong (and Right) About North Korea

A photograph features a large crowd of people marching in a street. People in the front row hold up a large, long yellow banner with black text that reads “WOMEN OF COLOR FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS.” Other people also carry signs with different slogans.

Broadening Demands for Reproductive Justice

A photograph features seven people seated on a grassy plain with a tree and body of water to their left, four flags posted on their right, and mountains and blue skies in the distance. All are wearing headpieces and blue clothing decorated with colorful patches.

Do Mountains Have Souls?

A photograph features two people smiling and holding chopsticks. Surrounded by sunlight, they sit side-by-side at an outdoor table with plates, pots, and plastic cups on it.

What Is Linguistic Anthropology?

Two adults and two children in brightly patterned clothing carry wooden jugs across a sandy setting scattered with clusters of green grass.

A Somali Archaeologist Is Championing Heritage in the Horn of Africa

A photograph features several stone pillars, some tilting towards others, with etched angular and circular designs on their visible front side. Blue skies and mountains lie in the background.

Heritage Forensics Is Tackling Devastating New Forms of Cultural Erasure

An illustration features a person with a protruding forehead, long brown hair, and a beard wearing an animal skin over their shoulders and holding a wooden spear. A child with similar long brown hair and clothing sits on the person’s shoulders.

The Family Lives of the Last Neanderthals

Directed upward, a photograph features leafy tree limbs covered with orange and black butterflies against a blue sky.

Alive in the Flapping of Infinite Orange Wings

A photograph features numerous light-purple ribbons tied into bows across the surface of a large, green wire fence.

Purple in Cycles

(RE)THINK HUMAN

Get our newsletter with new stories delivered to your inbox every Friday.