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.

Imagining Other Worlds at the India-Pakistan Border

For decades, soldiers at the border between Attari, India, and Wagah, Pakistan, have staged an elaborate ceremony for onlookers. An…

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…

A New Take on an Old Fossil Hints at Ancient Migrations

Two anthropologists explain how an enigmatic human fossil jawbone—and its 3D-printed reconstruction—may evidence an early Homo sapiens presence in Europe…

Ancient DNA Supports Swahili Oral Traditions

Two researchers explain how ancient DNA research is helping to restore the origin story of the Swahili people along the…

Rock Drawings

A Tohono O’odham poet and linguist reflects on the stories and wisdom ancestors communicated—how people survived, how they dispersed and…

Best of SAPIENS 2022

In a year of continuing global conflagrations, anthropologists investigated a wide range of pressing and curious questions about humanity’s past,…

How Diverse Was Medieval Britain?

An archaeologist explains how studies of ancient DNA and objects reveal that expansive migrations led to much greater diversity in…

Alive in the Flapping of Infinite Orange Wings

Monarch butterflies’ epic annual migration from North America to Mexico inspires an anthropologist to reflect on this insect’s precarious life…

Confronting Xenophobia Through Food—and Comics

An anthropologist who migrated from India to the U.K. uses his research to illustrate how fellow migrants from India maintain…

Archaeology at the Borders of the Refugee Crisis

Archaeological methods, which are typically used to study the past, can also illuminate the experiences of today’s displaced people. This…