Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Anthropology

Damon Conklin uses the body, from head to feet, as his canvas.

Today’s Tattoos

Making your mark

The new removable inks are made from safe pigments and trapped in nano-sized, harmless polymer shells.

The Tattoo Eraser

A new type of body art ink promises freedom from forever

Anthropologists recently found fossils of Paranthropus robustus, also called robust australopithecines, in an excavation site in South Africa. Paranthropus coexisted with human ancestors Homo habilis and Homo erectus as recently as 1.5 million years ago. Some anthropologists had believed that Paranthropus' limited diet caused its extinction, but new evidence from the fossils suggests that Paranthropus had a varied diet that included both hard and soft plants as well as herbivores.

Teeth Tales

Fossils tell a new story about the diversity of hominid diets

Sleeping with Cannibals

Our intrepid reporter gets up close and personal with New Guinea natives who say they still eat their fellow tribesmen

Lepeadon, the "fierce man" of the Letin clan.

Raffaele Among the Korowai

Paul Raffaele describes his adventures (and misadventures) in Indonesian New Guinea, reporting on the Korowai

None

Students of the Game

When the Aztec and Maya played it 500 to 1,000 years ago, the losers sometimes lost their heads—literally

Villagers on the island of Tanna dance in John Frum's honor each February 15. Clan leaders first saw their Yankee Messiah in the late 1930s. He later appeared to them during WWII, dressed in white like the unidentified navy seaman.

In John They Trust

South Pacific villagers worship a mysterious American they call John Frum - believing he’ll one day shower their remote island with riches

35 Who Made a Difference: Douglas Owsley

Dead people tell no tales—but their bones do, when he examines them

On the lookout for enemies, a warrior named Ta'van leads a patrol through the jungle. Several hundred Indians—some never seen by outsiders—live in the Amazon's Javari Valley.

Out of Time

The volatile Korubo of the Amazon still live in almost total isolation. Indian tracker Sydney Possuelo is trying to keep their world intact

None

Towering Mysteries

Who built them and why? An amateur archaeologist tries to get to the bottom of some astonishing structures in Tibet and Sichuan Province, China

Margaret Mead

Coalition of the Differing

It took Margaret Mead to understand the two nations separated by a common language

Indicating that Neanderthals buried their dead, a stone-lined pit in southwest France held the 70,000-year-old remains of a man wrapped in bearskin. The illustration is based on a diorama at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Rethinking Neanderthals

Research suggests they fashioned tools, buried their dead, maybe cared for the sick and even conversed. But why, if they were so smart, did they disappear?

None

Kon Artist?

Though evidence against his theory grew, Kon-Tiki sailor Thor Heyerdahl never steered from his course

The legendary Moai statues have fascinated modern civilization since their discovery.

The Secrets of Easter Island

The more we learn about the remote island from archaeologists and researchers, the more intriguing it becomes

Bone Specialist On Call

A Smithsonian anthropologist applies his expertise to cases of missing children and disaster victims

The Hatfield clan in 1897

A Tale of Fatal Feuds and Futile Forensics

A Smithsonian anthropologist digs for victims of a West Virginia mob murder

None

Smithsonian Perspectives

In the Smithsonian’s long history of studying cultures, we’ve learned to help people represent themselves

Page 16 of 16