Humans, Volume 6, Issue 2 (June 2026) – 5 articles

Secular changes in the physical growth of children in the 20th century have been examined largely between cohorts of boys or men, with fewer studies examining changes among girls/women or both sexes. Sex-specific growth trajectories and differential cultural treatment of the sexes can affect how girls and boys respond to changes in the ontogenetic environment. This study examined secular change in height (cm) and weight (kg) in affluent Portuguese school children from three periods over the 20th century: an early (1913–1916), middle (1929–1943), and late (1992–2012) period. Anthropometric data was taken from medical records and archives of two boarding schools located in or near Lisbon: the Colégio Militar for boys and the Instituto de Odivelas for girls. Height and weight data were collated from over 1349 children (over 825 boys and 524 girls), aged to 10 to 17 years. Height and weight were plotted against age for the three periods to assess secular changes and sex differences in the secular trend. Results indicate a similar pattern of secular change across boys and girls, wherein children measured in the late period demonstrated an increase in height and weight, with the greatest increase occurring between the middle and late periods. The increase in height and weight can be attributed to changes to the socioeconomic environment in Portugal after the 1960s, but particularly after the democratic transition of 1974. This includes population-wide improvements in living standards, sanitation, decreased disease load, access to medical care and improved quantity and quality of nutrition. Cultural-based preferential treatment of boys may have taken place, as boys increased more in relative and absolute height and weight. Full article

School-collected data on height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) offers tremendous potential for examining differences in the growth and development of students in varying environments. This study examines data on height, weight, and BMI of 1858 students, in kindergarten through eighth grade, from two school districts in central New Jersey that are geographically close, but that are distinct in composition regarding their self-identified primary ethnicity and socioeconomic environments. In one district, 78.6% of the students identify as Hispanic or Latino, and in the second district, 88.9% of the students identify as White. Mann–Whitney U tests and a Kruskal–Wallis test were run on height, weight, and BMI, comparing median values of the students from the two districts by grade and ethnicity, respectively. These results, combined with results from a Dunn post hoc pairwise test, indicate that the significant differences could be attributed to socioeconomic status or self-identified primary ethnicity. Upon further testing, however, comparing students of different self-identified primary ethnicities within districts and comparing students within the same self-identified primary ethnicity across districts reveals a stronger association with socioeconomic status. Overall, the students in the less affluent population were shorter and heavier than the students in the more affluent population. Full article

This article examines how bordering is experienced in alpine environments undergoing rapid ecological change. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2024 and 2025 in the transboundary region of the Aosta Valley (Italy), Haute-Savoie (France), and the Canton of Valais (Switzerland), it explores how more-than-human relations become strained, suspended, or reconfigured through infrastructural instability, environmental rupture, and sanitary regulation. Based on a photo-ethnography, the analysis focuses on three empirical cases: infrastructural disruptions in the Val de Bagnes; the collapse of the Birch Glacier in the Lötschental Valley; and the effects of the Lumpy Skin Disease on pastoral practices across transboundary valleys. The article shows that alpine spaces are continuously co-produced by more-than-human assemblages through dynamics, in which bordering emerges not as fixed spatial line but as a conditional relational process unfolding across elevations and over time. By foregrounding interruption, waiting, constrained access, regulated proximity, suspension and exposure, it contributes to posthuman border studies by approaching bordering as a relational dynamic grounded in the material and temporal conditions under which more-than-human relations become practicable or impracticable. Full article

Perhaps one of the most defining ‘techniques of the body’ for human beings is bi-pedal walking. This study brings together studies in socio-cultural anthropology to reflect on the nature of walking as a field method in different social-environmental contexts. The study offers an account of walking in relation to natural history, urban studies and contemporary conservation science. How has walking served as a field method in different knowledge-making contexts, and how does it afford an experiential way of being and belonging (or not) in urban and rural settings? By reflecting on such themes, this paper sheds light on the many ways that people walk, and the places, physical and metaphorical, that it takes them and allows them to discover, reveal, and understand. Full article

Humans, and most other late Homo species, are characterized by large brains and bodies. However, the discovery of two small-brained Homo species—H. floresiensis and Homo naledi—has cast doubts on large brain size as a defining feature of our genus. We reevaluated brain and body size scaling using data for 225 extant primates and 16 fossil hominid taxa, including one of the most diminutive species in genus Homo, H. floresiensis. Brain and body size are tightly correlated in genus Homo, varying along a positively allometric slope (R² = 0.84, F(1,5) = 33, p < 0.01) that is significantly different from the slope characterizing extant primates (R² = 0.94, F(1,222) = 3294, p < 0.001). Both small-bodied Homo floresiensis and Homo naledi have endocranial volumes (ECVs) that are consistent with their body size given the scaling relationship that characterizes genus Homo. Paired ECV and body mass estimates demonstrate considerable overlap of brain:body size proportions across fossil hominid taxa. Earlier hominids, Ardipithecus ramidus and Australopithecus anamensis, are characterized by ancestral brain:body size scaling; we discuss the hypothesis that a fundamental biological shift ca. 3 Ma altered the trajectory of encephalization—potentially linked to changes in fetal growth and gestation in Pleistocene fossil hominids—and may be directly implicated in the evolution of complex symbolic behavior in our lineage. Full article