Anthropology
60 articlesA Viral Twitter Thread Reawakens the Dark History of Anthropology
I’m an anthropologist and rarely have I seen such a harmful mix of inaccuracies and stereotypes about Indigenous people.
Love Is Biological Bribery
Evolution uses all its tricks to make sure we procreate. But love in humans is a many-splendored thing.
The Worth of an Angry God
How supernatural beliefs allowed societies to bond and spread.
The Beloved Mesolithic Girl
As a new mother, an anthropologist makes a moving discovery at an infant’s burial site.
What Industrial Societies Get Wrong About Childhood
Age-based classes are not the only way to learn—and may not be the most effective.
Why a Universal Society Is Unattainable
Our minds evolved in an Us-vs-Them universe of our own making.
The Psychic Toll of Severing the Hunter-Prey Relationship
The emotional connection between hunter and hunted raises important questions about what happens when an animal species disappears—what is the human response to such ill-fate?Wellcome Images / Wikicommons A productive hunt is a violent act—success requiring as it does the dismemberment of a living creature. Yet, to focus alone on the concluding moment, the bloody […]
An Ancient Site with Human Skulls on Display
Where our ancestors began to elevate themselves above nature.
Gender Is What You Make of It
Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and the relationship that changed social science.
Gender Is What You Make of It
Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and the relationship that changed social science.
How We Learned to Love Neanderthals…and a Lot of Other Hominids, Too
Genetic analysis reveals a complex tale of migrations and cross-species trysts in our human past
Why Doesn’t Everybody Have Dark Skin Today?
Questions and answers about the science of skin color.
Galactic Settlement and the Fermi Paradox
The results of galactic colonization models are a mixed bag for SETI optimists.
The Modern Mind May Be 100,000 Years Old
New fossil evidence shows sophisticated thought began earlier than we thought.
The Problem with the Frozen Poop Knife Study
In an experiment designed to test whether a tool forged by the cold from human waste could be used to kill a dog, surely the frozen implements created in the lab ought to have been tested on the skin of a dog.Photograph by K.H.Trudeau / Shutterstock When, some weeks ago, I was first contacted by […]
Why Symbols Aren’t Forever
The removal of cultural emblems is not the erasure of history but part of it.
Why Did Witch Hunts Go Viral?
If it is in fact accurate to think of witch trial beliefs as viruses, maybe it would be helpful to study their spread the way scientists study the spread of viruses: using an epidemiological model.“The Witch, No. 1” (1892) by Joseph E. Baker / Wikicommons It’s hard to make sense of witch hunts. Many people […]
So I Told These Nomads About the Big Bang…
Anna Badkhen tells us about the experiences that led to her Nautilus feature.
The Ancient Rites That Gave Birth to Religion
Sacred beliefs likely arose out of prehistoric bonding and rituals.
The Worth of an Angry God
How supernatural beliefs allowed societies to bond and spread.
The Biggest Misapprehension About Human Origins
Archaeologist Ticia Verveer recently posted a thread on Twitter showing that customer complaints go way back. And I mean way back. Verveer referred to a letter inscribed on a 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet. In the letter, Verveer writes, “The copper merchant Nanni details at length his anger at a sour deal, and his dissatisfaction with […]
Are Suicide Bombings Really Driven by Ideology?
The surprising anthropology of group identity.
The Point of Men’s Cults
Does their pervasiveness tell us something important about evolution and human behavior?
The City at the Center of the Cosmos
Robots and lasers are uncovering an ancient, sacred geography.
Which Comes First, Big Cities or Big Gods?
Warriors among the Kwara’ae, a collection of tribal communities indigenous to the Solomon Islands, sacrificed pigs before battle. The tradition granted the combatants, so the belief went, aid from heroic ancestral spirits—like the mighty A’orama, a fierce fighter in Kwara’ae folklore. For every man who prepared to shed blood, a hog met its end.1 Any […]
Why Nuclear Power Professionals Are Serious About Joking Around
In August 2013, Finland’s young nuclear professionals, under 35 years old, met up for the Summer Games in Mikkeli municipality, put on by the Finnish Nuclear Society’s Young Generation Group. Launched in 1998, the organization helps people interested in nuclear fields network. As usual, the plan was to escape office life, eat, drink, use […]
Love, Death, and Other Forgotten Traditions
What we don’t tell our children.
Gold Mining for Profit and Paleontology
How the Gold Rush and Fossil Rush came together.
The Caveman Guide to Parenting
Just as Paleo dieters assume a mismatch between human biology and the food culture of the postindustrial West, Paleo parents believe that modern parenting habits don’t support healthy child development.Photograph by H. Armstrong Roberts / ClassicStock Every evening as the sun sets, Robb Wolf begins his nightly ritual: While his two daughters play, he slowly […]
The Rituals That Ward Off Bad Luck Aren’t Arbitrary
Launch Ritual: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a tradition of eating peanuts during big, risky spacecraft events, such as Mars rover landings. Photograph by Kevin Baird / Flickr For the last two years of his baseball career, George Gmelch didn’t eat pancakes. Playing in the Detroit Tigers minor league system in the 1960s, two disappointing […]
What Military Theory Tells Us About Future Space Warfare
What is it good for?
The Modern Mind May Be 100,000 Years Old
New fossil evidence shows sophisticated thought began earlier than we thought.
Why Sports Die
Sports don’t survive their cultures of origin if they resist modern measurement.
Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food
How the chili pepper got to China.
Through Fortitude or Stupidity, Lee Berger Is Rewriting Human History
The paleoanthropologist makes no apologies for going his own way.
The Man Who Used Facebook to Find an Extinct Human Species
Lee Berger has a knack for finding fossils his own way.
Drums, Lies, and Audiotape
When I was invited to drum in Ghana, I gladly accepted. Then something went wrong.
About Your Skin
What you should know about your body’s biggest organ.
The Curious Case of the Bog Bodies
Why do so many corpses found in Europe’s peat bogs show signs of violent death?
Can Remnants of Ancient Life Show Us How to Live Wisely Into the Future?
At long-term nuclear repositories in Finland and Sweden, waste will be ensconced in cast-iron inserts (right), which are then placed in copper canisters (left).Posiva Oy This is part 2 of Vincent Ialenti’s report on how how to think about nuclear waste in the environment over the very long term. Also see part 1, which ran […]
Looking Into the Far Future of Earth’s First Long-Term Nuclear-Waste Vault
On June 1, 1676 the Battle of Öland was raging, as the Swedish navy grappled with a Danish-Dutch fleet for control of the southern rim of the Baltic Sea. Amid bad weather, Kronan—Sweden’s naval flagship in the region and one of the largest warships of its kind at the time—made a sudden left turn. Its […]
How ISIS Broke My Questionnaire
I felt the impact of an attack by the terrorist group. So why didn’t my research data?
The Amazing Sky Calendar That Ancients Used to Track Seasons
The Nebra Sky Disk photographed in Basel, Switzerland, in 2006Dbachmann via Wikipedia Henry Westphal is tired. It’s July 4, 1999, a Sunday. He and a friend are climbing the Mittelberg or “Central Hill,” a small mountain near Nebra, in central Germany. Both men know of ancient ruins located here. Equipped with two metal detectors, […]
So I Told These Nomads About the Big Bang…
Anna Badkhen tells us about the experiences that led to her Nautilus feature.
The Curse of the Unlucky Mummy
When science and fear collide, a supernatural story thrives.
Our Neanderthal Complex
What if our ancient relatives did “human” better?
Mutation Helps Create the Most Durable Religions
Traditional performers at the 2007 Mt. Hagen Cultural Show in Papua New GuineaIan @ ThePaperboy When people think of religions, they tend to turn to of the big five: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Although these are the most popular religions in the world, they are a minuscule sample of the thousands of religions […]
An Astrobiologist Asks a Sci-fi Novelist How to Survive the Anthropocene
Kim Stanley Robinson imagines our future.
The Curse of the Unlucky Mummy
When science and fear collide, a supernatural story thrives.
Why Light Inspires Ritual
For Aboriginal cultures, light is a physical and spiritual guide.
Early Humans Made Animated Art
How Paleolithic artists used fire to set the world’s oldest art in motion.
How We Make Gods
Taking lessons from the rise and fall of divinity in online games.
Brave New Epoch
A search for humankind’s mark on the Earth.
Best of 2013: The Caveman’s Home Was Not a Cave
Our picture of man’s early home has been skewed by modern preconceptions.
Beer Domesticated Man
Early man chose pints over pastry. Wouldn’t you?
The End of Human Uniqueness, and a New Beginning
Today Nautilus launched its second issue, “Uncertainty: A new look at an indeterminate world.” For now we’ve just opened up the first chapter, “Uncertainty in Nature,” with looks at how uncertainty is embedded in math, particles of matter, our genomes, and possibly space-time itself. The rest of the issue will emerge over the course of […]
Graphing Human Uniqueness
Nautilus readers vote on what they think makes humans special.
We Are All Princes, Paupers, and Part of the Human Family
I recently discovered that my 10-times-great-grandfather bought a good chunk of Brooklyn from the Lenape Indians. He was one of the first Dutch landowners on this continent, a man who had run a laundry bleaching business in Holland but had traveled under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company to become a farmer in […]
We Built These Bodies
Changing the human body, one invention at a time.
Cooperation Is What Makes Us Human
Where we part ways with our ape cousins.
The Cosmopolitan Ape
Empathy, morality, community, culture—apes can have it all!