Anthropology

Steps away from the public restrooms in Yosemite Village, a buzzy stop in Yosemite National Park’s iconic valley, sits a brown metal dumpster. Visitors reach up to open the trash chute.…

When Small entered the cemetery for the first time in the summer of 2012, she burned sweetgrass—a plant with spiritual significance across Native cultures. “The sweetgrass brings the spirits…

Now, his team has evidence that the brains of the Tsimane and neighboring Moseten people may age slower than yours, mine, and the brains of pretty much everyone else in the industrialized…

"The Doctor's Art" is a weekly podcast that explores what makes medicine meaningful, featuring profiles…

ProPublica recently released a story that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been…

In 2016, Vice reported that nondominant hand masturbation (also known as “left-handed wanking”) was a thing. Various explanations were presented for the practice, including the thrill of…

Perhaps, as Davis and other archeologists suggest, those people came from northeast Asia by boat, moving south along the Pacific coastline and setting up camps along the way. “The Pacific…

If you think your dog loves you, you’re a fool. If you feel a kinship with a tree, you’re a hippie. And if you over-empathize with a wild animal, you must be wearing cheetah prints and a…

How is it possible to spend so much time with your parents and grandparents and not really know them?This question has puzzled me as an anthropologist. It’s especially…

We’re often told to “be here now.” Yet the mind is rarely tethered in place. We take mental trips to our past, revisiting what happened yesterday or when we were children, or we project into…