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Anthropology

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Why Don’t Lions Attack Tourists on Safari and More Questions From Our Readers

A Moon-less Earth, yoga history, climate change and human speech

While Chagnon defends conclusions drawn from decades of fieldwork in the Amazon, some fellow scholars charge that he has engaged in sensationalistic self-promotion.

Why Was This Man an Outcast Among Anthropologists?

Napoleon Chagnon’s new memoir reignites the firestorm over his study of the Yanomamö

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Why Time is a Social Construct

Psychologists and anthropologists debate how different cultures answer the question, “What time is it?”

Another medicinal tattoo of the Kayan

Can Tattoos Be Medicinal?

In his travels around the world, anthropologist Lars Krutak has seen many tribal tattoos, including some applied to relieve specific ailments

IQ scores have significantly risen from one generation to the next.

Are You Smarter Than Your Grandfather? Probably Not.

Senility isn’t the answer; IQ scores are increasing with each generation. In a new book, political scientist James Flynn explains why

Dr. Oliver Sacks dives deep into the brain to find the greatest adventures.

Why Oliver Sacks is One of the Great Modern Adventurers

The neurologist’s latest investigations of the mind explore the mystery of hallucinations – including his own

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The Carbon Dioxide in a Crowded Room Can Make You Dumber

In his new book, Moral Origins, evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Boehm speculates that human morality emerged along with big game hunting.

How Humans Became Moral Beings

In a new book, anthropologist Christopher Boehm traces the steps our species went through to attain a conscience

Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program at the Natural History Museum, proposed that climate change was the driving force in human evolution.

Q and A: Rick Potts

The Smithsonian anthropologist turned heads when he proposed that climate change was the driving force in human evolution

Homo heidelbergensis—one of five sculptures crafted for the new exhibition hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History—takes shape at a Baltimore foundry.

Sculpting Evolution

A series of statues by sculptor John Gurche brings us face to face with our early ancestors

Starting in 1864, Arlington National Cemetery was transformed into a military cemetery.

How Arlington National Cemetery Came to Be

The fight over Robert E. Lee’s beloved home—seized by the U.S. government during the Civil War—went on for decades

Some 80 million "lost" pages include records of people and police assassination orders.

A Human Rights Breakthrough in Guatemala

A chance discovery of police archives may reveal the fate of tens of thousands of people who disappeared in Guatemala’s civil war

One of the riches found at Khara Khorum, this gold alloy bracelet dates from the 14th century. It is decorated with a phoenix flanked by demons.

Genghis Khan’s Treasures

Beneath the ruins of Genghis Khan’s capital city in Central Asia, archaeologists discovered artifacts from cultures near and far

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Shuten Dōji Will Drink Your Blood and Eat Your Flesh

The boy's skeleton was crammed into a cellar pit with a broken ceramic milk pan lying across his rib cage.

Solving a 17th-Century Crime

Forensic anthropologists at the National Museum of Natural History find answers to a colonial cold case

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The Tragic Tale of the Pygmy in the Zoo

Equatorial Africa's rain forests have sustained Pygmies for millennia. Now other peoples are competing for the forests' resources, displacing the Pygmies.

The Pygmies’ Plight

A correspondent who chronicled their lives in central African rain forests returns a decade later and is shocked by what he finds

In 2006, it was discovered that the hippocampus had been stolen from its case and replaced with a fake. This counterfeit is now on display at the Usak museum.

Chasing the Lydian Hoard

Author Sharon Waxman digs into the tangle over looted artifacts between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Turkish government

Andrew Curry is a professional journalist based in Germany with degrees in international relations and Russian and East European studies and is a contributing editor to Archaeology magazine. You can find more of his work at www.andrewcurry.com.

Andrew Curry on “The World’s First Temple?”

The monastery from inside the ramparts at twilight.

In Iraq, a Monastery Rediscovered

Near Mosul, war has helped and hindered efforts to excavate the 1,400-year-old Dair Mar Elia monastery

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