Anthropology

The Russian Orthodox Church in Igiugig

In Emotional Homecoming, Smithsonian Repatriates 24 Sets of Human Remains

Collected by an anthropologist in 1931, the National Museum of Natural History returned the bones to the village of Igiugig

One of the excavated burials in Drawsko, Poland showed a skeleton with a sickle placed over its neck, likely to prevent the dead from rising again as the undead.

Burials Unearthed in Poland Open the Casket on The Secret Lives of Vampires

What people actually did to prevent the dead from rising again was very different than what Hollywood would have you think

The Ainu, the Indigenous people of Japan, have fought Japanese domination for centuries. As this century unfolds, their efforts are finally paying off.

How Japan's Bear-Worshipping Indigenous Group Fought Its Way to Cultural Relevance

For a long time, Japanese anthropologists and officials tried to bury the Ainu. It didn't work

William Maples holds a bone fragment during a presentation about the Romanov Investigations, circa 1992.

William R. Maples Popularized Forensic Anthropology Long Before CSI

Maples worked on a number of high-profile cases that helped to bring the field of forensic anthropology to prominence

The Pleistocene world was filled with megafauna like woolly mammoths and saber-tooth cats. Did humans kill them all off?

Are Humans to Blame for the Disappearance of Earth’s Fantastic Beasts?

100,000 years ago, giant sloths, wombats and cave hyenas roamed the world. What drove them all extinct?

In 2001, Smithsonian scientists Doug Owsley and Kari Bruwelheide traveled to the Grove in Glenview, Illinois, Robert Kennicott's boyhood home, to open the naturalist's casket and determine the cause of his death.

Smithsonian's Behind-the-Scenes 'Sidedoor' Podcast Returns for Second Season

New episodes explore a 150-year-old cold case, the history of beer, war photography and more

The bird feathers attached to artifacts in the John Wesley Powell collection can give anthropologists further insight into customs and trade.

Telling the Story of 19th-Century Native American Treasures Through Bird Feathers

Famed explorer John Wesley Powell’s archive of his 19th century travels is newly examined

Multiple views of the young teen's right humerus arm bone that runs from the shoulder to the elbow show where the tumor left its mark.

Oldest Cancer Case in Central America Discovered

A young teen, who died 700 years ago, likely suffered pain in the right arm as the tumor grew and expanded through the bone

This spine is the earliest intact reference for how humans' skeletons may have developed.

This 3.3-Million-Year-Old Hominin Toddler Was Kind of Like Us

Analysis of the ancient spine reveals tantalizing similarities—and questions about human evolution

In 1950, Tollund Man’s discoverers “found a face so fresh they could only suppose they had stumbled on a recent murder.”

Europe's Famed Bog Bodies Are Starting to Reveal Their Secrets

High-tech tools divulge new information about the mysterious and violent fates met by these corpses

Reconstruction of the Tham Lod woman who lived 13,600 years ago

Researchers Work to Take the Bias Out Of Facial Reconstruction

Instead of relying on European-centric data sets, researchers used a global database to help image a 13,600-year-old woman from Thailand

The challenges of finding fruit may have driven the evolution of bigger brains in our primate ancestors

What Really Made Primate Brains So Big?

A new study suggests that fruit, not social relationships, could be the main driver of larger brains

"Numbers are a human invention, and they’re not something we get automatically from nature," says Caleb Everett.

How Humans Invented Numbers—And How Numbers Reshaped Our World

Anthropologist Caleb Everett explores the subject in his new book, <em>Numbers and the Making Of Us</em>

The 38,000-year-old woolly mammoth carving next to Georges Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte." Despite the vast amount of time between their respective creations, both use a collection of dots to form a larger image.

Prehistoric Pointillism? Long Before Seurat, Ancient Artists Chiseled Mammoths Out of Dots

Newly discovered 38,000-year-old cave art predates the French post-Impressionist art form

Mary Leakey and her husband Louis in 1962.

Mary Leakey’s Husband (Sort of) Took Credit For Her Groundbreaking Work On Humanity’s Origins

Leakey and her husband, Louis Leakey, were a paleoanthropology power couple

The limestone carving of an aurochs

Dig This: Researchers Found a 38,000-Year-Old Engraving in France

Excavated from a rock shelter, the image of an aurochs covered in dots was made by the Aurignacians, the earliest group of modern humans in Europe

The horse mandible marked by traces of stone tools, which might prove humans came to North American 10,000 years earlier than previously believed.

Humans May Have Arrived in North America 10,000 Years Earlier Than We Thought

A 24,000-year-old horse jawbone is helping rewrite our understanding of human habitation on the continent

This piece of rock might have caught a Neanderthal's eye

Did Neanderthals Like Pretty Rocks?

An unusual rock in a cave inhabited by Neanderthals in Croatia suggests the hominids may have picked up interesting stones

An Inca skull from the Cuzco region of Peru, showing four healed trepanations. The new review focuses on the practice in ancient China.

Drilling Deep: How Ancient Chinese Surgeons Opened Skulls and Minds

A new review finds evidence that the Chinese performed trepanation more than 3,500 years ago

How does language influence our thoughts? Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner in "Arrival."

Does the Linguistic Theory at the Center of the Film ‘Arrival’ Have Any Merit?

We asked a Smithsonian linguist and an anthropologist to debate the matter

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