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.
Disasters
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You Won’t Survive the Apocalypse Alone
In times of societal collapse—including pandemics—past societies persevered not by running away but by banding together.
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We All Live on Permafrost
Thawing permafrost isn’t just a problem facing the Arctic. An anthropologist who works with Indigenous communities in Siberia argues that the way to turn around climate catastrophe is by engaging all knowledge systems.
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Adapt or Abandon? Hard Choices in the Himalayas
Anthropologists are documenting how global warming is transforming Asia’s water tower and threatening the livelihoods of farmers and herders.
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Did an Asteroid Shape This Famous Biblical Story?
Analysis of debris at the site of an ancient city demolished by a cosmic impact has led an archaeologist and his colleagues to theorize the same event destroyed Sodom. -
These Unheralded Workers Are Helping Prevent the Next Wildfire
In Southern California, an anthropologist’s research aims to illuminate his late father’s work of weed abatement. He’s learning how crews of migrant Latinx workers bring deep environmental knowledge to stop destructive fires at the wildland-urban interface.