MEET THE SAPIENT TEAM
Ruby Mustill
Editor-in-Chief
Columbia College '21
Emma Gometz
Creative Director
Columbia College '21
Aeja Rosette
Co-Creative Director
Columbia College '22
Angela Risius
Board Editor
Columbia Social Work '21
Sneha Bapana
Board Editor
Barnard College '23
Iris Querenet
Board Editor
Barnard College '19
Professor Jill Shapiro, PhD
Sapient Faculty Advisor &
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Evolutionary Biology of the Human Species (EBHS) at Columbia University
jss19@columbia.edu
A special thank you to Kyle Bukhari,
E3B Director of Administration and Finance
LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
Vol. 7, Spring 2020
Dear reader,
On behalf of the editorial board and our faculty advisor Dr. Jill Shapiro, I am proud to share the seventh volume of Sapient, Columbia University’s Undergraduate Journal of Biological Anthropology. The papers included in this edition showcase the impressive and thought-provoking research of Columbia’s undergraduate biological anthropology students.
Eight years ago, the founding editors of Sapient set out to encourage intellectual curiosity and foster community across all areas of biological anthropology, with a particular focus on four specific domains: human variation and genetics, evolutionary history and theory, primate behavior and ecology, and paleoarchaeology and morphology. We hope that this issue succeeds in these goals as fully as have the volumes of previous years.
We are thrilled to be releasing this Spring 2020 edition after a two-year wait. Since 2018, our team has focused primarily on relaunching the journal’s website; creating an informal blog; hosting a series of events on campus; and recruiting a diverse membership representing a variety of majors, disciplines, schools, and grade levels. Notably, the seventh issue of Sapient features a new emphasis on visual art. With this, we aim to provide a creative space and a platform for artists on campus—while also continuing to encourage scientific research in a field we love.
We hope that the following works are both engaging and inspiring, and that our readers appreciate the seventh edition of Sapient as much as we enjoyed creating it.
Ruby Mustill
Editor-in-Chief