Background information states he drew his knowledge from working in culturally complex situations in remote north Indian communities, his experience as a survivor of torture and a refugee, and over three decades working in remote communities from Tasmania to Far North Queensland with culturally diverse communities, service providers and government agencies.
Dr Farvardin used large scale public art to give a voice to marginalised communities and issues that were close to his heart. His sculptures included Indigenous Australians, Australian native animals and cultural symbolisms of peace.
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| Red-Tailed Black-Cockatoos feasting on nuts next to busy road . Vallis . |
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| Photos by Craig. |
The wide interests and extensive network of contacts of Darwin agronomist and activist Robert Wesley-Smith are apparent yet again in recent emails received from him by this blog . One of particular interest included the following release .
A new study from the University of Adelaide and The Australian
National University (ANU) has outlined the first genomic evidence of early
migration from New Guinea into the Wallacea, an archipelago containing
Timor-Leste and hundreds of inhabited eastern Indonesian islands.
The study, published
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, addresses major gaps in the human genetic history of the Wallacean Archipelago
and West Papuan regions of Indonesia – a region with abundant genetic and
linguistic diversity that is comparable to the Eurasian continent – including
the analysis of 254 newly sequenced genomes.
In combination with linguistic and archaeological evidence, the
study shows that Wallacean societies were transformed by the spread of genes
and languages from West Papua in the past 3500 years – the same period that
Austronesian seafarers were actively mixing with Wallacean and Papuan groups.
“My colleagues at the Indonesian Genome Diversity Project have
been studying Indonesia’s complex genetic structure for more than a decade, but
this comprehensive study provides confirmation that Papuan ancestry is
widespread across Wallacea, pointing to historical migrations from New Guinea,”
says lead author Dr Gludhug Ariyo Purnomo, from the University of Adelaide’s
School of Biological Sciences.
“By connecting the dots between genetics, linguistics, and
archaeology, we now recognise West Papua as an important bio-cultural hub and
the launching place of historical Papuan seafarers that now contribute up to
60% of modern Wallacean ancestry.”
Genomic research is also becoming increasingly important for
developing new medicines tailored to specific genetic backgrounds.
“In the era of precision medicine, understanding the genetic
structure of human groups is vital for developing treatments that are helpful
rather than harmful, with Wallacea and New Guinea having been poorly
represented in past genomic surveys,” Dr Purnomo says.
Associate Professor Ray Tobler, from ANU, says Wallacea had been
isolated for more than 45,000 years since the arrival of the first human
groups, and the more recently arriving Papuan and Austronesian migrants
reconfigured Wallacean culture by introducing new languages that diversified
and intermingled to create its rich linguistic landscape.
“Our findings suggest that the Papuan and Austronesian
migrations were so extensive that they have largely overwritten the ancestry of
the first migrants, making the recovery of these ancient migrations from
genetic data challenging,” says Professor Tobler, who is also an Adjunct Fellow
at the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.
According to the researchers, there are challenges in
reconstructing past movements of people using modern genetic data due to
historical migrations and movements.
“There's also been so much movement in Wallacea in the past
couple of thousand years, due to the spice trade and slavery, that it obscures
the relationship between geography and genetics,” Associate Professor Tobler
says.
“What we know about Wallacea and New Guinea is just the tip of
the iceberg, but the use of ancient DNA can help to overcome some of these
challenges and help us to understand the origins and legacy of human journeys
to the region stretching back tens of thousands of years.”
( Wallacea . Papua. Study.)
