This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
The human skeleton has long been a resource for science, offering insights into disease, migration, and evolution. Credit: Boris Hamer from Pexels A Legacy of Exploitation For centuries, human remains have been collected, often without consent, to serve scientific and medical purposes.
However, the journey to this unique bond between humans and canines was far from straightforward. A new study 1 suggests that in prehistoric Alaska, humans repeatedly domesticated and lived alongside not just dogs but also wolves, wolf-dog hybrids, and even coyotes.
A Quest for Our Earliest Stories Myths and legends have always been windows into the human psyche, revealing our fears, dreams, and attempts to understand the world. Yet, could these stories also encode the history of humanity’s migrations and interactions?
An anthropologist and poet reflects on a journey of return that tells a larger story about human connection, acts of Indigenous solidarity, and the potential for repair within anthropology. Even now, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History alone has amassed the remains of more than 33,000 individuals.
A recent study led by researchers from London’s Natural History Museum and the KU Leuven Institute of Philosophy reignites the debate over whether Homo sapiens and Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ) should be classified as separate species. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are both humans, but they differ in many ways.
The scientific establishment, still enthralled by the Eurocentric idea that human origins were tied to Asia or Europe, was unwilling to accept an African cradle for humanity. His work was shaped by the racial and colonial attitudes of his time, and his interpretation of human evolution was, at times, influenced by problematic ideas.
A Discovery in the Desert The story of human migration is often told in sweeping arcs—great waves of Homo sapiens leaving Africa, moving into Eurasia, and eventually populating the entire planet. Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2025). Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2025).
Anna Apostolidou PhD, Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology, Ionian University Given the history of our discipline, it seems rather peculiar that anthropologists are not more “naturally inclined” to employ multimodality in their research and teaching.
A groundbreaking study 1 of ancient human DNA from the Oakhurst rock shelter in South Africa is shedding new light on population history in one of the world’s earliest regions of modern human activity. These new results from southernmost Africa are quite different, and suggest a long history of relative genetic stability.”
A recent study, published in the European Journal of Archaeology 1 , suggests these plaques may represent one of humanity's earliest attempts at recording genealogy—a non-verbal precursor to modern ancestry documentation. Journal : Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences , 2017. eyes, noses) weakens this claim.
While we can't definitively say that these early humans crafted stone tools, our findings demonstrate that their hands were frequently used in ways that closely align with the actions necessary for human tool manipulation," explained Fotios Alexandros Karakostis, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen. afarensis , A.
The human urge to collect and preserve objects, what Jacques Derrida calls archive fever , takeson special significance when there is no body to bury, no grave to visit. The social life of these clothes had a shift, akin to the widely discussed binary shift from commodity to gift within anthropological discourse.
Intersectional Anthropology. Here, I share about my class, “Intersectional Anthropology,” and reflect on some of the ways it has played into my career, while also acknowledging my privileges as a person who holds a Ph.D. Studying human bodies provides a deep historical perspective on social dynamics whose echoes remain with us today.
Instead of that essay, I reflect here on the problematic my response in this anecdote highlights: balancing the patterned resonance of history and the total singularity of each life, in attempts to name and redress harm done at Mother and Baby Institutions (M&BIs) and in ethnographic work. Good material for an essay like this one.
She planned to major in digital media arts, but before she could start, Delta State eliminated that major, along with 20 other degree programs , including history, English, chemistry and music. In all, more than 25 programs have now been eliminated there, many of them in the humanities. The cuts “take away from us, our education.”
It is also known as physical anthropology, which originally referred to the study of human biology within the framework of evolution and with an emphasis on the interaction between biology and culture. Thousands of specimens of human ancestors (mostly fragmentary) are now kept in research collections.
This new analysis, published in the journal Antiquity 1 , sheds unsettling light on the darker side of prehistoric human behavior. ” The Scene of the Massacre The story begins in the 1970s, when excavators first uncovered over 3,000 human bones and fragments deep within the Charterhouse Warren shaft. Examples of cranial trauma.
New research, published in Nature 1 by an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, delves into the lives of two neighboring Avar communities in Lower Austria. Their findings reveal an intriguing story of cultural integration despite distinct genetic divides. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0092.2009.00348.x
A Glimpse into Europe’s Earliest Settlers Over 45,000 years ago, small groups of modern humans roamed the icy expanse of Ice Age Europe. Among these pioneers were individuals whose lives and genetic histories have now been reconstructed from the oldest modern human genomes yet sequenced.
The courses covered many domains—design, medicine, the environment—but most featured an anthropological flair, and most of the organizers had an anthropology background. I titled my course—one of the four core courses—“Tears of the Earth: An Anthropological Thinking Experiment.”
In featuring three SAPIENS poems, students in a digital anthropology seminar infused video reels for Instagram with vivid history and powerful emotions. ✽ For a digital anthropology seminar at the University of Denver, I asked my students: “Why do the pressures of our lived realities demand a response through poetry?”
Cooking is often viewed as a significant turning point in human evolution. It not only provided the extra calories needed to support larger brains 1 but also transformed the way early humans interacted with their environment. Unlike other species, humans are biologically adapted to consume cooked food.
i] History of the usage: The word “peasant” appears in English in late medieval and early modern times, when it was used to refer to the rural poor, rural residents, serfs, agricultural laborers, and the “common” or “simple” people.
Application of Archaeology Archaeology is the study of human past through material remains. archaeologists study past humans and societies primarily through their material remains – the buildings, tools, and other artifacts that constitute what is known as the material culture left over from former societies. How were those pots used?
These values rest on the belief that humans are apart from natural systems rather than a part of these systems, creating tensions for federal land managers and residents. Instead, it looks broadly at history, politics, ideologies, and other factors to explain how these harms emerge and get perpetuated across time and space.
The error perhaps was in believing that this was a single event in a linear, evolutionary understanding of humanity through time. Nonetheless, recent ancient DNA work is now revealing patrilineal descent for some Neolithic groups in Britain. A reconstructed roundhouse gives a sense of what structures in the Iron Age looked like.
Humanhistory is not just about where we came from but how we adapted to the ever-changing environments we encountered. Studies on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited exclusively from the mother, found that all modern human mtDNA lineages trace back to a common ancestor in Africa, roughly 200,000 years ago.
The genetic legacy of Neanderthals persists in modern humans, with 1-2% of non-African genomes composed of Neanderthal DNA—a determination made through comprehensive sequencing and comparison of ancient and modern genomes. “These beneficial traits spread rapidly in early human populations.”
Within a few decades, they built an empire that stretched from the Eurasian steppe to the heart of Central Europe, reshaping political landscapes and leaving an imprint on European history. 137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes." Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, 19 , 263-289. Rasmussen, S.,
McIver defines society as “a system of usage and proedurs, of authority and mutual aid of many groupings and divisions, of control over human behaviour and of liberties. While one cannot image to have a society without collection of individuals similarly, one cannot have human beings without forming a mutual social relations.
Issued: July 15, 2024 Pitches due: rolling until November 1, 2024 First drafts due: 3 weeks after pitch decision Submit Here Anthropology News invites submissions on the forms of care that permeate human and nonhuman worlds. How do we care for objects, archives, words, history, traditions, animals, plants, ideas, and obligations?
Key contributors to the study include Carl Lipo, Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Science; Robert J. ” Rethinking Easter Island’s History The traditional narrative of Easter Island has long been used as a cautionary tale, an example of how human societies can cause their own destruction by depleting natural resources.
Over the last 12,000 years, a pivotal shift occurred in the human genome, driven by the advent of agriculture and the shift to a carbohydrate-rich diet. This process allowed early humans to extract more energy from crops like wheat and grains, which became staples in post-agricultural societies.
There papers in Nature Ecology and Evolution 1 2 3 summarize findings at the Ranis site and showcase a Stone Age culture that predates previous estimates, shedding light on the coexistence of modern humans and Neanderthals. In the recent excavations at Ranis, a fragment of human bone was discovered. 1 Mylopotamitaki, D., Fewlass, H.,
Ariana Gunderson is a PhD student in Anthropology at Indiana University and the Anthropology News Section Editor for SAFN. Rationally, I know my choice not to buy bananas (or pineapple) is so minimal within the issue when you think about the overall systemic structure, complexity, and history of our unjust food system.
ELIZABETH KEATING, Professor of Anthropology & Graduate Faculty, Human Dimensions of Organizations, The University of Texas at Austin Teaching through research is recognized as one of the strengths of anthropology. The interview assignment encouraged them to see anthropology in conversation with their own families.
The reconstruction of early human evolution has largely been shaped by fossil evidence found in a few key locations in Africa. The eastern branch of the East African Rift System, encompassing renowned sites like Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania, is one of the most significant sources of early human fossils.
They were the remains of animals deeply intertwined with the histories and cultures of Indigenous communities. “Even when they pass on, you still respect and honor them as non-human relatives. “Even when they pass on, you still respect and honor them as non-human relatives. “You care for horses.
The word "tribe" has a long and ignoble history and remains one of the most variably used terms within and outside of anthropology (Helm 1968). Morgan’s Ancient Society (1861) and Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871) that made investigation on Tribal society a systematic enterprise. It was L.H.
Lagging behind in scientific understandings of human diversity, the medical profession is failing its oath to “do no harm.” ✽ Doctors lie daily. I was struck by an alarming dichotomy: Genetics and anthropology scholarship have unanimously refuted a biological basis for race. The reason lies deep in humanhistory.
The two concepts are often combined in anthropological writings and they have a close and complex historical relationship. On the other hand, ethnography also designated the aspiration to collect systematically, and according to rigorous procedures, facts about human languages, customs, arts, and achievements.
The prevailing narrative of how humanity came about seemed straightforward enough: In what is today Europe, the last Neanderthals bowed out as Homo sapiens began arriving on the continent around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago. Archaeological excavations at Mandrin Cave revealed the remains of both Neanderthals and modern humans.
The morning of my 26th birthday, I woke up to incredible news for my field of evolutionary anthropology: For the first time, the study of human evolution won a Nobel Prize. Such interest also distracted from the breakthrough’s Nobel-worthy value: answering scientific questions about species’ history and evolution.
Issued: January 29, 2024 Response deadline: February 23, 2024 Pitch responses: February 29, 2024 First drafts due: March 27, 2024 For our third issue of 2024, Anthropology News is delving into the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI) and its intricate relationship with human reality. And is humanity shaping AI?
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 5,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content