Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Anthropology

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

None

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

None

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

None

Richard Covington on “Lost & Found”

George Washington

Digging Up George Washington

Archaeologists continue to uncover more about the nation’s first president

An Aztec figurine holds a cacao pod

Globalization: Good for Local Cuisines?

Christopher Henshilwood (in Blombos Cave) dug at one of the most important early human sites partly out of proximity—it’s on his grandfather’s property.

The Great Human Migration

Why humans left their African homeland 80,000 years ago to colonize the world

None

Amy Chua

The key to the rise of the Romans, the Mongols—and the U.S.? Ethnic diversity, Chua says in a new book

None

Blame the Rich

They made us who we are, some researchers now say

None

Underground Munchies: Chimps Dig ‘Em

None

Animal Insight

Recent studies illustrate which traits humans and apes have in common—and which they don’t

None

Down to Earth

Anthropologist Amber VanDerwarker is unraveling the mysteries of the ancient Olmec by figuring out what they ate

None

Fred Spoor

The evolution scholar talks about a landmark new study challenging the classic view of human ancestry

None

You Are Short And You’re Gonna Die Soon

Page 15 of 17