A Window on Humanity’s Turbulent 2021
The SAPIENS editorial team looks back at the year through an anthropological lens—and closes with a roundup of some of our favorite pieces published in the magazine in 2021.
Reflections
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Rethinking Masculinity: Fathers as Caregivers
An anthropologist explores whether the qualities fathers acquire though caregiving shifts their understandings of manhood.
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How Apes Reveal Human History
Great apes provide a window into the story of human evolution—and that’s one more reason to protect them.
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An Archaeologist on the Railroad of Death
The 1950s Hollywood movie The Bridge on the River Kwai, about a Japanese POW camp during World War II, nearly contained a fascinating side story about a dedicated archaeologist prisoner. Hendrik Robert van Heekeren deserves the spotlight.
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Death as Something We Make
An anthropologist dives deeply into how “medical aid-in-dying” is transforming the ethics and aesthetics of death.
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Why Are Black People’s Remains in Museums?
Two archaeologists consider how the remains of thousands of Black people ended up in U.S. museums and what it would take for these institutions to begin to address the harm they have caused.