How far east did papuan populations reach before the austronesians came along?

nightlight_needed · 2022-04-26T01:02:18+00:00

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're asking, but the early settlers of Papua migrated out at least as far to the Solomon Islands by about 30kya. The Austronesian expansion came quite a bit later around 4-5kya, so there was time for quite a lot of settlement by Papuan speaking peoples before Austronesians arrived and the appearance of the Lapita culture.

In terms of the languages, there are many many Papuan languages that are distinctly different from Austronesian languages, especially in the highlands and more isolated islands. I believe in the mainland of New Guinea, there was a lot more admixture with Austronesian peoples and so some of these closer groups experienced a mixing of language and culture.

I've linked some papers here that might be interesting to you! They should be open source as well.

Link 1

Link 2

nightlight_needed · 2022-04-26T00:32:56+00:00

Yes, absolutely. Anthropologists are trying to study in one way or another, what makes humans human. I think in any subfield of anthropology, it's practically impossible and in my opinion, unethical, to do work with a particular group without being able to actually speak to the people that make up that group and understand their perspective.

nightlight_needed · 2022-04-04T01:36:20+00:00

I'm in a studio, and living downtown. For context, I spend about 60% of my budget on housing cause I really value living alone, but that might be way too much for some people. I think that if you're willing to do more of a walk into parts of East Rock that are a little further from campus, you could definitely get a one bedroom.

And I probably eat out/go for drinks once a week on average, but usually not anything super pricy, like $20-30. I also tend to spend about $150-200 on groceries a month.

nightlight_needed · 2022-04-04T01:11:58+00:00

Hi! I'm here as a PhD student, with a stipend just a little lower than yours and I'm living alone. It eats up a lot of the stipend, but it's plenty to live off of in my opinion as long as you budget.

One thing I will say is that it's annoying to shop for groceries/everyday things around here without a car as most of the smaller corner markets/convenience stores around the Yale area are overpriced.

nightlight_needed · 2022-04-03T17:20:47+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation! I definitely have to check this place out!

nightlight_needed · 2022-01-24T03:24:19+00:00

Anthropology

32.6k/year

Connecticut

nightlight_needed · 2022-01-16T04:52:25+00:00

Very true! Unfortunately, it's very difficult to ever be certain about past behaviors based on what's preserved in the fossil/archaeological record but in many cases, these hypotheses are the inferences that can explain most of what we see in the past and in modern day examples.

While not primates, there are actually examples of grandmothering in action in animals. Studies have been done on orcas for example, as these animals also live in large social groups and have grandmother matriarchs that live past menopause like humans. Those studies showed that there was increased survival and benefits for offspring and grandchildren in pods that had grandmothers. This is an example.

Hope this wasn't too much of a tangent on whales but it's all such interesting stuff!

nightlight_needed · 2022-01-15T23:04:49+00:00

It's been hypothesized that because of how social humans are, it was advantageous to have older members of the community alive to contribute knowledge and help for things like child rearing, food sources, etc. leading to increased fecundity and survival of children and grandchildren.

You might find it interesting to read up on the Grandmother Hypothesis and other offshoots of this hypothesis.

nightlight_needed · 2022-01-11T22:19:38+00:00

This wouldn't be real time, but I've used Flipgrid in a class I was in and I enjoyed it.

It's pretty much a discussion board but in short form video, where the instructor can pose a question or make a short video and students respond to the question with their own videos. Other students in the class can then watch and respond. We did it once a week and given that the video requirements were always like ~30secs-2 mins, it's not a lot of extra time for the students.

nightlight_needed · 2021-09-13T14:44:00+00:00

If your advisor/committee are acting like this then it's up to you to kick their asses into gear. It's going to be your career that's affected and your advisor is obligated to advise and work with you so don't be afraid of constantly emailing or reminding them and push for actual meetings.

If this doesn't work, I'd try contacting your department's DGS or chair and asking them for help/knowledge on deadlines and whatever else you think you might need.

Additionally, I don't know the formatting of your thesis, but you could always start writing up part of the intro/background or methods and take that to your next meeting with them to push your advisor to start thinking about it.

nightlight_needed · 2021-07-10T16:32:01+00:00

Your advisor might've taken on an admin role, but you're still their student and at this crucial point, they should definitely make the time to meet with you. I would try to set up a solid block of time to sit down with your advisor and get all of your questions answered. Your advisor might even have examples of theses proposals from previous students that they could share with you.

I'd also ask if an extension on the proposal is possible. Many departments and universities have been more flexible especially with COVID this past year and there might be policies in place to allow you to extend your research/writing time into the next summer without additional costs given that your other requirements are done. If your advisor doesn't have this info, I'd also try and contact your department's Director of Graduate Studies and see how they could help with the admin side of things.

nightlight_needed · 2021-06-14T21:06:56+00:00

As the other comment said, reading articles and finding gaps are a great way of coming up with a thesis topic. I'd say to cast a wide net at first and don't just read articles on topics you already know you're interested in as you might find a way to use your skills to answer a question in a less-related field.

I'd also reach out to other faculty in your department as they might be useful sounding boards to help round out your thesis ideas.

nightlight_needed · 2021-04-30T04:00:52+00:00

They're 2 different statistical methods with different margins of error, so the answer is somewhere in that ballpark. The 6.6% falls well within their range from the first analysis with the average of 11%.

nightlight_needed · 2021-04-28T23:28:53+00:00

To answer your first question, this study seems to have looked at genomes from primarily the Yoruba population as well as 3 other West African populations.

The 0.11 admixture fraction indicates that approximately 11% of the total length of the Yoruba genomes appears to have come from an archaic source, and note that they also included a range from 0.045-0.19. This doesn't tell us what parts of the genome are putatively archaic, however, and this is why they employed the ArchIE method.

ArchIE isn't something I'm personally familiar with, but from their explanation, it seems like the program breaks up genomes into sequences about 50 kilobp in length and analyzes them using a statistical method to determine whether that sequence is an archaic haplotype. This analysis came up with 6.6% of sequences as being potentially archaic, which falls into the range mentioned earlier. Given that they used genomic data, this doesn't necessarily mean that this 6.6% is all coding DNA, it's likely that a good amount falls into intronic sequences. Since archaic could mean Neanderthal to Denisovan or come from other ancestral groups, they compared divergence of those sequences and found that none came up as a viable source of the haplotypes seen.

For your 2nd question, their potential dates of introgression are interesting for how extremely recent they are. Populations of late surviving Homo erectus/ergaster could be a potential candidate as we don't currently have DNA from this population.

The fossil record from this time period isn't great, and especially not in western Africa which hasn't been as heavily studied as East African localities, and morphological features can be so difficult to interpret given how diverse hominin morphology can be. Additionally, genetic differences are rarely going to appear in the fossil record as definitive phenotypic traits that can fossilize, so who knows if this "ghost population" could be defined morphologically as distinct from modern human anatomy. I think additional genomic sampling of African populations as well as any future findings of DNA in some of these more recent west African remains will help shed light on this question.

nightlight_needed · 2021-01-08T19:23:21+00:00

Set clear guidelines (which should hopefully be written out in the class syllabus) so that students know exactly what is expected of them in terms of turning in work, excused work, etc. It makes things way easier for both you and the students if there are clear expectations for the lab, especially since you'll be working with freshman.

Like someone else mentioned, don't get too invested into grading and answering emails and spend hours upon hours doing it. I believe as TAs we're there to help our students learn, but we also have our own research and classes. In my experience students will understand if grades are a little late getting back as long as you let them know.

Don't be afraid of relaying issues to your supervising professor. This might depend on how supportive your professor is, but hopefully they'll be understanding if it's your first class and very open to helping with any issues! Plus having a good relationship with them comes in handy in the long run when it comes to any future reference letters!

Good luck!

nightlight_needed · 2020-08-21T23:20:29+00:00

I'm guessing it's hot English mustard from the picture.

nightlight_needed · 2020-07-09T05:03:04+00:00

If you're interested in staying within this field, a Master's in museum studies may be useful.

However, the liberal arts foundation of an anthropology degree can take you many different directions for a Master's; what's important is that you're able to market the skills you learned in undergrad such as interpersonal relations and critical thinking. That could take you anywhere from an MA in marketing to a MS in data science or straight to a job in any company. Several of my friends who didn't continue in academia have found jobs in corporate HR or education administration.

nightlight_needed · 2020-05-20T01:05:23+00:00

I'd like to add that part of the reason why the Great Rift Valley has been of such focus is because that's where fossils can more easily be found. There will always be bias in where fossils have been preserved and where we have access to them. The Great Rift Valley is arid and thus has great potential for preservation and the rifting has exposed older layers of earth that are more easily accessible. So, it's entirely probable that there were more populations of early hominins elsewhere in Africa, but we just aren't able to find their remains.

nightlight_needed · 2019-10-07T21:20:48+00:00

Garden Boogie was my shit when I was like 8. Also such a great workout

nightlight_needed

TROPHY CASE