Michael Laxer
What Does Play Tell Us About Human Evolution?
By Brenna R. Hassett Our species devotes a singular amount of time to an utterly unserious aspect of life: play. This begs the question:...
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Michael Laxer
Apr 168 min read
Property and Debt in Ancient Rome
The Roman concept of property is essentially creditor-oriented. As Rome’s power grew, practices quickly became predatory. House of the...
Michael Laxer
Apr 1210 min read
A Class Analysis of the Trump-Biden Rerun
Amaury Laporte, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons By Richard D. Wolff By “class system” we...
Michael Laxer
Apr 127 min read
Why Culture Is Not the Only Tool for Defining Homo sapiens in Relation to Other Hominins
We need a broad comparative lens to produce useful explanations and narratives of our origins across time. An ancient skull excavated...
Michael Laxer
Apr 915 min read
The Myth That India’s Freedom Was Won Nonviolently Is Holding Back Progress
Some struggles can be kept nonviolent, but decolonization never has been—certainly not in India. Public domain image of Gandhi leaving a...
Michael Laxer
Apr 66 min read
How Elite Infighting Made the Magna Carta
Although the Magna Carta typically is depicted as the birth of England’s fight to create democracy, the 13th-century struggle was to...
Michael Laxer
Mar 118 min read
Debt Forgiveness in the Bronze Age
Whether in the realms of trade or agriculture, the operative principle was that debtors should not lose their economic liberty by being...
Michael Laxer
Mar 97 min read
The Great Archaeological Discovery of Our Time
An interview with renowned archaeologist Gary M. Feinman on the emergence of a global data set from our past that humanity can use to...
Michael Laxer
Mar 65 min read
Empire Decline and Costly Delusions
President of Russia Vladimir Putin and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping, March 2023 -- Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0...
Michael Laxer
Mar 66 min read
Discarding Old Theories on the Path to Finding the First Humans Outside Africa
Spectacular archeological finds reveal the true past of the first Europeans. Atapuerca, Gran Dolina excavation -- Malopez 21, CC BY-SA...
Michael Laxer
Mar 24 min read
The Adaptive Value of Teenagers: How Peer Learning Contributes to Primate Success
By Brenna R. Hassett Anthropological science is our species’ attempt to address our most fundamental questions about who we are and how...
Michael Laxer
Feb 267 min read
Outdated Narratives Have Humanity in a Downward Spiral—It’s Time to Tell ‘Stories for Life’
A short film and narratives project “Stories for Life” seeks to bring about the shift in culture that humanity needs to survive....
Michael Laxer
Feb 232 min read
Advances in Archaeology Allow Us to Understand Political Evolution and Social Change in Deep Time
Archaeological Zone of Yaxchilan -- ZoRrO0880, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons By...
Michael Laxer
Feb 226 min read
The Evolution of the Human Pair Bond
Young couple enjoying each other's company -- John Brighenti from Rockville, MD, United States, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/li...
Michael Laxer
Feb 1515 min read
How Three New Museums Are Teaching the World About a Paradigm Shift in Our Understanding of Human Origins
New findings and significant advances in research have scientists rethinking our origins, and museums around the world are working to...
Michael Laxer
Feb 143 min read
We Can Interpret How Cooperative or Autocratic Mesoamerican Societies Were From Their Systems of Communication
View of the Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramid of the Sun, from Pyramid of the Moon, Teotihuacán -- Jackhynes, Public domain, via...
Michael Laxer
Feb 116 min read
Prepared Learning: What Are Humans Hard-Wired for at Birth?
By Marjorie Hecht Do living beings learn and pass on to future generations some behaviors or predispositions more easily than others––and...
Michael Laxer
Feb 910 min read
How Long Has Humanity Been at War With Itself?
Is large-scale intra-specific warfare Homo sapiens’ condition or can our species strive to achieve global peace? Primitive tools --...
Michael Laxer
Jan 196 min read
How the Food Industry Uses Big Tobacco’s Playbook
The strategy used by Big Tobacco in the US is called state or “ceiling” preemption: promoting weaker state public health laws to override...
Michael Laxer
Jan 46 min read
A Compelling Theory to Explain a Key Trait of Modern Humans
Pinnacle Point, South Africa By Marjorie Hecht Paleoanthropologist Curtis Marean has developed a comprehensive explanation based on a...
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