Table of contents
Announcement

After ten years of exploring humanity in all its diversity, SAPIENS has concluded its publishing chapter.

While the magazine has closed, its living archive endures—open to all and preserving the many ideas, voices, and discoveries that deepen our understanding of what it means to be human.

Bringing Nhakpoti, the Kayapó Story of Star Girl, to the Screen

Over years and across long distances, an international filmmaking team collaborated to bring to life the origin story of how…

What Pots Say—and Don’t Say—About People

Archaeologists long abandoned the simple notion that “pots are people”—that people’s identities directly correspond with the pottery they made and…

Feeling What We Are/A’yel jtaleltik

An anthropologist and writer from the Tseltal community speaks back to a colonialist history of suppression—instead claiming his identity, language,…

Giving Winter a Funeral in Transylvania

In a village in Romania, residents maintain a centuries-old carnival tradition called farsang to mark winter’s death. ✽ As the…

Two Myths Fueling the Conservative Right’s Dangerous Transphobia

An anthropologist attends the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)—ground zero for the current onslaught of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation in…

How Do We Heal?

A poet-anthropologist who is a Passamaquoddy tribal member lights a path toward healing both within the field of archaeology and…

Looking for the Lepchas

A poet of the Indigenous Lepcha community of the Eastern Himalayas is looking to find herself as she grapples with…

Seeker of Life/Kawsay Thawiq

A Quechua poet and linguist speaks to the conflicting feelings some Indigenous groups experience when non-Native paleoarchaeologists and others visit…

The Path

A poet-anthropologist reflects on the musings of an older Noni woman from Cameroon who critiques anthropology’s past as a handmaiden…

Mayel Lyang

A poet of the Indigenous Lepcha community of the Eastern Himalayas ponders how to draw maps of the mind, heart,…