Portside

In 1932, with the Great Depression underway, President Herbert Hoover and General Douglas MacArthur violently suppressed the Bonus March, a massive encampment of veterans demanding relief, with far-reaching and unforseen consequences.

What kind of society did people live in for most of our history? There is strong evidence that humans lived in nomadic egalitarian bands. This does not mean that humans are naturally egalitarian. Like us, our ancestors faced complex politics.

Americans who don't believe in God are a fast-growing and left-leaning force in politics – and they’re typically even more politically active than white evangelicals.

Remnants of ancient viral pandemics in the form of viral DNA sequences embedded in our genomes are still active in healthy people, according to new research my colleagues and I recently published.

Recent calls to prohibit the study of race and racism in public schools would have dismayed Till-Mobley, who died in 2003. It’s more reason to remember her insistence that Till’s story be used to educate, even when some consider it controversial.

When the first humans moved out of Africa, they carried their gut microbes with them. Turns out, these microbes also evolved along with them.

While Columbus Day affirms the story of a nation created by Europeans for Europeans, Indigenous Peoples Day emphasizes Native histories and Native people – an important addition to our ever-evolving understanding of what it means to be American.

Over the past decade, however, the study of ancient DNA, recovered from fossils up to around 400,000 years old, has revealed startling new twists and turns in the story of human history.

Our Homo sapiens ancestors shared the world with Neanderthals, Denisovans and other types of humans whose DNA lives on in our genes. Unearthing those extinct genomes has profound practical and philosophical implications.