Kickers: Culture Lab - SAPIENS

Anthropology Magazine

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 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?

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 young children and two adults sit in a circle. One of the adults whispers in a child’s ear while the others watch.

What Misspellings Reveal About Cultural Evolution

A grass-covered mound, used by the Anglo-Saxons, sits surrounded by trees and hedges, with flat, concrete slabs on the ground in front of it.

Culture—Not Genetics—Was More Salient for Anglo-Saxons

An overhead shot of a limestone cave with green vegetation inside. Two people stand near a fence on the right.

Discovering Africa’s Oldest Burial

People carrying out daily tasks in medieval Angkor Wat. Tall palm trees and temples in the distance.

How Many People Lived in the Angkor Empire?

Reimagining Rock Art in Southern Africa

cellphone ethnography - Cellphones have become an integral part of many people’s lives.

How Cellphones Make and Break Human Connections

Why Losing Bonds Sports Fans

Tungurahua, an active volcano in Ecuador, sits amid farming communities that have dwelled alongside it for generations.

How to “Co-Live” With a Natural Hazard

paleo processing foods - Anthropologist Bill Schindler uses techniques developed 5,000 years ago to prepare fresh-caught salmon during the filming of National Geographic’s The Great Human Race.

Did Processed Foods Make Us Human?

nonverbal communication online

Why Do Virtual Meetings Feel So Weird?

What Many Don’t Know About Welfare

nepal water insecurity - The Budhi Gandaki River, shown here downstream from Nubri Valley, rushes with icy turquoise water.

A Nepalese Region Reclaims Its Holy Water

The people of Hasankeyf, Turkey, have long enjoyed the nearby Tigris River, seen here in 2019. Recently, the creation of the Ilisu Dam has submerged their town.

The UNESCO Site That Never Was