A Century Ago, Women Played Ice Hockey
Ice hockey came to the U.S. from Canada at the end of the nineteenth century. Women started playing immediately, forming their own clubs.
Sewing Saved Us from a “Cold Snap” 13 Thousand Years Ago
Sewing a full winter outfit from animal hides took 105 hours. And we needed lots of them to survive the Younger Dryas Cold Event.
The Anti-Jewish Tropes in How the Grinch Stole Christmas
You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch. You’re in keeping with the medieval tradition of viewing the Jew as an outcast and a baleful force in society.
The Truth about “Caveman Courtship”
Cartoon stories about early humans bear a striking resemblance to many popular uses of evolutionary psychology today.
This Isn’t the First Baby Bust
And it's unlikely to be the last. One scholar looks at the factors that contributed to the increase in childlessness at the turn of the twentieth century.
Ch’arki: The First Jerky
Ch'arki is made in the high-altitude Andes by alternately drying the meat in the hot sun and freezing it during the cold nights.
What the Reconstruction Meant for Women
Southern legal codes included parallel language pairing “master and slave” and “husband and wife.”
The Bizarre Social History of Beds
For centuries, people thought nothing of crowding family members or friends into the same bed.
Thanksgiving Has Been Reinvented Many Times
From colonial times to the nineteenth century, Thanksgiving was very different from the holiday we know now.
Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights
Jazz, King declared, was the ability to take the “hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.”