New Guinea is the heart of global linguistic diversity. New Guinea makes up 1% of the global land area as an island, containing less than 0.2% of the world's population and 20% of all languages. The obvious linguistic and anthropological question is why? There are many social and evolutionary theories about the development and maintenance of New Guinea’s extreme linguistic diversity. This project explores the role of time and cultural boundaries in the development of New Guinea’s linguistic diversity. Using existing and new genetic samples from across Papua New Guinea, I build phylogenetic models of the region’s genetic diversity. Metadata collected alongside the genetic samples presents the opportunity to test the influence of cultural factors on genetic diversity. By considering the role of culture, in terms of both the linguistic boundaries and the role of patrilocal norms, I show language family boundaries constrain genetic diversity above and beyond the simplest genetic diversification model, isolation by distance. 

Dr. Sam Passmore is a computational anthropologist at the Australian National University, as part of the Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative (ECDI). His primary research focuses on the linguistic and cultural diversity of kinship practices, where he maintains the global kinship terminology database Kinbank (kinbank.net), but has a breadth of experience in the computational modelling of cultural evolution. He completed his PhD at the University of Bristol in 2020, before moving to Keio University (Japan) to study the cultural diversity of music, before arriving at ANU. His current research is interested in the cross-section of genetic and linguistic diversity, and the role that kinship plays in driving diversification in both domains.