Tom Higham— Monday 22 June 2015 at 9:10 am. One of the great moments of my life. I was in one of the laboratories at the Research Lab for Archaeology at Oxford University, where I have worked for the last twenty years. With one of my students, Samantha Brown, I
Anthony Aveni— Where did it all come from? What are we doing here? What will happen to us? There’s Genesis—a creation story (actually, an amalgam of stories) told in the Middle East more than three millennia ago by a disenfranchised people that attempts to answer these profound questions. A single
Agustín Fuentes— We all believe. But we are not all religious. Belief is an evolved capacity that incorporates our neurobiology, our behavior, our cultures, our histories, our individual development and experiences. This enables humans to live in the here and now, in the moment, in the material world, and to
Ned Blackhawk and Isaiah Lorado Wilner— The circle of scholars, authors, and intellectuals who shaped, and were shaped by, the anthropologist Franz Boas is wide and varied. Indeed, the intellectual legacies of this “Boasian Circle” cross disciplines, national boundaries, and hemispheres. Boas and his intellectual network provide a lens to
James C. Scott— Historical humankind has been mesmerized by the narrative of progress and civilization as codified by the first great agrarian kingdoms. As new and powerful societies, they were determined to distinguish themselves as sharply as possible from the populations from which they sprang and that still beckoned and
We’re all part of groups, large or small, but how and why do humans form groups and societies? We look at how cognition influences society and what it means for our understanding of the world. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Spotify
How have we used size to judge people over time? What is the history of size in popular culture? Lynne Vallone discusses how bodies both big and small influence our perception. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud
A look at the history of fishing from ancient civilizations to modern times and the problems caused by overfishing
Jessica Barnes and Michael Dove— An August 2012 edition of The New Yorker magazine adopted an unseasonal topic for its front cover: Santa Claus. In the illustration, Santa is slumped on the ground against a striped pole, cheeks flushed, under the yellow orb of a bright sun. In place of
The woman’s face is devoid of features, and she has no fingers or toes. Her legs extend from wide hips but taper into a V, and her arms taper into nothingness down her sides. Her stomach, breasts, and buttocks are full, even suggestive of steatopygous, a condition that this woman’s