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Anthropology
God is not a vending machine, but is it wrong to treat him like one?
How (not) to end up in the ash heap of history.
A poignant, 2,000-year-old burial in northern Italy could be the latest evidence of an ancient friendship.
When is a rabbit not a rabbit? When it's a thought experiment designed to reveal the tricky tango of language and concepts.
Despite billions of years of life on Earth, humans first arose only ~300,000 years ago. It took all that time to make our arrival possible.
His career helped define humanity’s place in the world by bringing us “a little closer” to our ape relatives.
CRISPR study helps answer a question that has long puzzled scientists.
NuqneH! Saluton! A linguistic anthropologist (and creator of the Kryptonian language, among others) studies the people who invent new tongues.
New radiocarbon dating reveals astonishing insights.
After listening to the same playlist, people from the United Kingdom, the United States, and China reported feeling nearly identical bodily sensations.
Archaeologists have identified what may be Europe’s oldest human-made megastructure.
Some of the world's most satisfied societies are poor, small, and remote.
Benjamin Breen on his greatest revelations while writing about the birth of psychedelic science.
The Uros of Lake Titicaca live on floating islands made from reeds. How did they get there?
The study suggests that human ancestors expanded across Europe faster than previously thought.
Skilled hunters adapted to the changing landscape and left tantalizing clues to who they were.
Two scientists recently wagered a bottle of whiskey. The bet? Whether we'll find evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life in the next 15 years.
Western societies seem to be getting inflammation achingly wrong.
They have held our fascination ever since we first identified their remains.
A basement renovation project led to the archaeological discovery of a lifetime: the Derinkuyu Underground City, which housed 20,000 people.
Today, the F-word is enjoying a renaissance the likes of which it hasn’t seen since, well, the Renaissance.
The pseudoscience phrenology swept the popular imagination, and its practitioners made a mint preying on prejudices, gullibility, and misinformation.
"I grew up in New Jersey in the 1970s and that experience gave me everything I needed to become a skeptic."
Perhaps it’s not just an oddly shaped hill, after all.
After turning up hundreds of genes with hard-to-predict effects, some scientists are now probing the grander developmental processes that shape face geometry.
This necropsy represents an early entry in what would become a tradition of performing autopsies to consider an individual’s sanctity.
Gladiators fought in rounds, and there were referees to enforce rules. Only rarely were gladiators killed.
Scientists don't understand why the correlation exists.
Using peach and eggplant emojis as shorthand for sex may seem like a new thing, but Renaissance artists were experts at using produce to imply intercourse.
The young and healthy were not just as likely to die as the old and frail, according to a new analysis.