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Anthropology Magazine

Expanding worlds by exploring everything human.

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Against a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, a hand holds aloft a hollow cube filled with white, black, red, green, and yellow electronic components.

The First Space Launch for Mauritius

An anthropologist recounts how a small island nation built and deployed its first satellite—and what their effort says about unequal access to the growing space economy on Earth.
A bright arc of orange light carves across a deep blue night sky.

How Cosmic Explorations Are Reshaping Life on Earth

In a series of essays, a collaborative research project brings together “space anthropologists” to investigate how communities around the globe are grappling with the current boom in outer space exploration.
A pane of glass blurs pink, red and white, and other colored tulips that appear behind it.

Emic/Etic

A poet-anthropologist offers an “anti-glossary” to contest ways of knowing in social science that objectify people(s) into categories.
A woman in a blue sweater, tan dress, and tall brown boots pushes a dolly loaded with a great ape skeleton through a white room full of taxidermic animals.

Envisioning a More Empathetic Treatment of Great Ape Remains

Many museums are reckoning with the colonial legacies of the human remains and cultural objects in their collections. Now anthropologists are advocating to pay similar respects to primates.
Three small animals with tufts of white fur around their ears and gray, tan, and black fur on their bodies huddle together looking toward the camera.

Were Twins the Norm in Our Primate Past?

New research uncovers how the last common primate ancestors typically birthed twins until evolutionary pressures began to favor singletons—likely driven by the advantages of birthing larger, brainier offspring.
White orchid flowers catch the light streaming in from the right-hand side of a photo, with the rest of the image in darkness.

Passing Notes

The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during Japanese occupation.
Buffalo stands in water that reaches to the animals’ chests. The sun sets on the horizon, illuminating the rippling surface of the water. Trees are visible in the background.

How a Megadam Disrupts the Flow of Water—and Money

In Northeast India, a controversial hydropower dam moves toward completion—causing great uncertainty for downstream dwellers whose livelihoods depend on the river.
A mountain looms beyond a green field of palm trees.

The Vanishing Traces of Our Earliest Ancestors in Indonesia

A paleontologist journeys through Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago in search of Homo erectus remains, but uncovers how environmental devastation has erased much of the region’s history.
A golden dome rises in the background atop a mosque. The image was taken through a doorway that includes a dark screen framing the sidewalk and moque.

Heaven on Earth and Jesus Is Palestinian

A poet calls readers to act in the face of interconnected violence, exploitation, and privilege.
Children run in front of an ancient stone wall and columns adorned with green, red, white, and black flags. Cars are parked in an adjacent lot that looks out onto gently rolling green and brown hills.

The Battle to Protect Archaeological Sites in the West Bank

An archaeologist from Palestine is urgently working to assess archaeological sites in the West Bank devastated by destruction and looting amid Israel’s ongoing war in the region.
Bright stickers show colored lips that smile and display tongue and teeth on a retro-style poster.

The Strange Power of Laughter

An anthropologist explores laughter as a far more complex phenomenon than simple delight—reflecting on its surprising power to disturb and disrupt.
A person in army fatigues walks in front of a looming surveillance tower flanked by high fences topped with barbed wire.

An Order for My Backpack and Three Stages of Nowhere

A poet moves through rituals of silence and erasure that permeate the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Una persona vestida con uniforme militar camina frente a una imponente torre de vigilancia detrás de una valla rematada con alambre de púas enrollado.

El orden de mi mochila y Tres etapas para nada

Un poeta recorre rituales de silencio y omisión que permean la prisión militar estadounidense en la Bahía de Guantánamo, Cuba.
A man wearing a white, red, black, and yellow feathered headband and a patterned shirt stands in front of a truck filled with leafy green plants while a small group of people looks at a pile of greenery on the ground near the truck.

Cultivating Dragon Fruit’s Political Power in Ecuador

In the Ecuadorian Amazon, an anthropologist explores how the Shuar people are betting on dragon fruit cultivation to reclaim economic autonomy and political sovereignty.
Green, purple, red, yellow, and white flowers arranged in the shape of a uterus lie on a sunlit sidewalk.

My Errant Uterus

In a time of heightened threats to reproductive rights, a women’s health scholar and mother of two comes face to face with her uterus.
In front of a black sign with white letters that reads "Defend Life & Human Rights," people hold hand-made signs.

Translation Notes

A translator’s notes are refashioned into a poem calling for justice for Indigenous peoples in the Philippines displaced by a megadam.
A person swings flame in a circle around them at night, with lights of a city in the background.

Poets Resist, Refuse, and Find a Way Through

In a themed collection, poets trace contours of power to critique colonialism, environmental destruction, and social violence while transforming the landscape of possibilities.
Beneath a blue sky with a few wispy white clouds, the glassy, rippling deep-blue surface of the ocean stretches to the horizon.

Home-Carrying—A Repatriation Trip to Vanuatu 100 Years in the Making

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.
On an urban block lined with parked cars, three green birds with red bills perch on square metal bird feeders mounted to a tree trunk.

Living With Parakeets and Other Migrants

Amsterdam, like other European cities, hosts growing populations of non-native parakeets. An anthropologist unpacks what shifting attitudes toward these birds reveal about humans.
A vibrant, abstract scene features blurred blue and orange lights glowing outward from a central area, with silhouetted figures in the foreground.

Best of SAPIENS 2024

Anthropologists from around the globe brought dazzling insights and deeply reported concerns to the digital pages of SAPIENS magazine.
A person dressed in a red Santa Claus suit with white trim kneels on a military runway while speaking into a handheld radio. In the background are two rows of large military airplanes.

Unwrapping Operation Christmas Drop

An anthropologist takes a critical eye to a long-running holiday tradition: a U.S. military mission that drops toys and supplies throughout Micronesia.
An image focuses on two hands of a statue in shadow coming together holding a white flower.

Survival Notes

Black African women in former colonial centers such as London gesture to subversive ways of communicating with those imprisoned in archives across generations.
People walk through a long, wide museum hallway with high arched ceilings and skylights framed by tall tan columns.

Spain’s Move to Decolonize Its Museums Must Continue

In early 2024, Spain’s culture minister announced that the nation would overhaul its state museum collections, igniting a wave of anticipation—and controversy.
La gente camina por un largo y ancho pasillo del museo con altos techos arqueados y claraboyas enmarcadas por altas columnas de color canela.

El impulso de España para descolonizar sus museos debe continuar

A principios de 2024, el ministro de cultura de España anunció que el país renovaría las colecciones de sus museos estatales, desatando una ola de expectación y controversia.
A person wearing a dark blue shirt and a red umbrella hat walks through a lush field of tall green grasses.

It’s Time to Replace “Prehistory” With “Deep History”

A team of archaeologists working in Southeast Asia is pushing toward a deeper understanding of history that amplifies Indigenous and local perspectives to challenge traditional archaeological timelines.
A line of cattle travel across a dry desert landscape, kicking up dust.

An Imagined Monograph for Nongqawuse

A 19th-century prophetess reportedly bore a serious message from the ancestors to her Xhosa people amid British colonial assault. The written archives judged her—but much still remains unknown and unacknowledged.
On a quiet street at night, a small, glowing rectangular device rests on the sill of a stall window shuttered with a corrugated metal cover.

Phantom Vibrations of a Lost Smartphone

An anthropologist who studies human-computer interactions explores how and why losing one’s smartphone feels so unsettling.
A U-shaped cove encircled by rugged peaks covered in green forest opens to an ocean in varying shades of blues that extends to the horizon where colossal white clouds sit.

How and When Did Humans First Move Into the Pacific?

New archaeological research reveals insights into the first-known seafarers to brave ocean crossings from Asia to the Pacific Islands more than 50,000 years ago.
An old bucket coated in multicolored limestone sits in front of a limestone-covered wall out of which protrudes a faucet dripping water that falls into the bucket.

Her Dirge

A poet-historian reflects on women’s labor carrying memories and the past.
A gray-haired woman sits on an exam table in a light-filled doctor’s office and looks out a window.

Doctors Are Taught to Lie About Race

Decades ago, anthropologists dispelled the myth of biological race. Lagging behind in scientific understandings of human diversity, the medical profession is failing its oath to “do no harm.”
An ape-like mannequin, with protruding facial features and a body covered in fur, stands in a museum exhibition under dramatic lighting. Next to it, a text panel starts, “The human story begins.”

Lessons From Lucy

Fifty years ago, the remains of an Australopithecus afarensis ancestor, named “Lucy” by archaeologists, rewrote the story of human evolution.
A photo shows the back of a person in a dark suitcoat standing at a podium and speaking to a large, captive, seated audience. Most onlookers wear red MAGA hats and Trump T-shirts.

Five Reasons Why Trump Won Again

In an effort to address toxic polarization in the U.S., an anthropologist of the “Trumpiverse” explains MAGA supporters’ thinking in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.