Dear reader,

 

On behalf of the editorial board and our faculty advisor Dr. Jill Shapiro, I am proud to share the eighth volume of Sapient, Columbia University’s Undergraduate Journal of Biological Anthropology. The papers included in our Fall 2021 edition showcase impressive and thought-provoking research by undergraduate biological anthropology students from Columbia and other institutions around the country.

 

Nine years ago, the founding editors of Sapient set out to encourage intellectual curiosity in 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. Sapient’s goal has always been to include compelling papers on a wide range of topics, and we hope that this issue does so as well as previous volumes have. 

 

Unlike the editions before it, Sapient’s eighth volume is the product of more than a year of working exclusively online—virtually holding meetings, editing papers, and reviewing the issue’s visual art. Despite the imperfections of running a campus journal remotely, Sapient has seen a number of successes in the last year, including receiving the greatest number of written submissions in the journal’s recent history. This abundance of interest has made for an excellent edition, and I am proud to publish every work in this volume.

 

As Sapient’s longest-running editor in chief, I am also proud of how the journal has grown since the beginning of my tenure. In the last two and a half years, Sapient has published two volumes, held two in-person events for Columbia’s EBHS community, introduced a new focus on visual art, updated its website, and created stickers to promote the journal. None of these developments would have been possible without the creativity and enthusiasm of Emma Gometz and Aeja Rosette, to whom I am extremely grateful. I am eager to see how the journal flourishes under Aeja’s leadership this year.

 

To those reading this volume: thank you for making our work worthwhile. We hope you appreciate the eighth edition of Sapient as much as we enjoyed creating it. 

 

Ruby Mustill

Editor-in-Chief