Simon J. Greenhill

@simongreenhill.bsky.social

1.8K followers 950 following 610 posts

I study how languages and cultures evolve. Primarily with phylogenies and other assorted computational methods. Based at @Biology_UoA. Never met a language phylogeny or a cultural phylogeny I didn't like. #phylolinguistics .. more

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Simon James Greenhill is a New Zealand scientist who works on the application of quantitative methods to the study of cultural evolution and human prehistory. He is well known for creating and building various linguistics databases, including the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, TransNewGuinea.org, Pulotu, and many others. In addition to Austronesian, he has contributed to the study of the phylogeny of many language families, including Dravidian and Sino-Tibetan. .. more

Computer science 19%

Communication & Media Studies 19%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.bsky.social · 2d

"Oh yay, the robbers who stripped science for parts are magnanimously robbing us less!"

"And we totally trust these robbers and liars to actually disburse our funds instead of just dangling it over our heads (they've never done that before, right?)"

Congress Is Reversing Trump’s Steep Budget Cuts to Science

www.nytimes.com

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 2d

True, but what's a few million years between friends? :D

Reposted by Jussi T. Eronen

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 2d

It makes sense for hominins to be deeply ancestrally cultural.

We raised kids with neanderthals, Denisovans, if not others (erectus?).

You need language and some shared values to make this work (and it did repeatedly)

John Hawks @johnhawks.net · 2d

All hominins were cultural species. Cultural learning has always been part of their evolved strategies of adaptation to their environments. Culture isn’t last; culture is first.

www.johnhawks.net/p/how-archae...

How archaeologists are missing Pleistocene cultures

I propose a “Culture First” way of looking at ancient remains, instead of the “Culture Last” assumption so pervasive in the field.

www.johnhawks.net

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Dr Vincent Raoult @sawsharkman.bsky.social · 2d

If the government wants research to work more with industry, they need to sort this out. It's impossible to plan anything with industry partners when you have to tell them its over a year to know whether a grant is successful or not.

ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · 2d

⁉️The ARC has delayed outcomes of ALL grants 1–4 months & increased scheduled outcome windows from 2 weeks to 3 months!

This reverses 4 years of progress in providing greater certainty & ability to plan for researchers, their families & unis.

Their excuse? Security checks under new ARC legislation👇

Black text on white background. Screenshot of ARC’s Network Message regarding delays to grant announcements because of new security arrangements.

Reposted by Winnifred R. Louis, Simon J. Greenhill, Martin Tomko , and 4 more Winnifred R. Louis, Simon J. Greenhill, Martin Tomko, Tama Leaver, Joanna Tai, Catherine J. Frieman, Vincent Raoult

ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · 2d

Reposted by Diane Coyle, Dorothy Bishop, Simon J. Greenhill , and 1 more Diane Coyle, Dorothy Bishop, Simon J. Greenhill, Paul Nightingale

Jack Ryan 🙏🧪 @jacksonwryan.com · 2d

🧪 Here's a science mystery to start the year.

Why are species names for fish and plants appearing in the scientific literature in papers about firefighter injuries, hearing loss and heart attack?

Is it AI? Translation tools? Something else?

nobreakthroughs.substack.com/p/is-this-fi...

Red YT wtf circle around the black and white image of a fish with a big black eye. It's a predaceous chub.

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill, Jussi T. Eronen

John Hawks @johnhawks.net · 2d

How archaeologists are missing Pleistocene cultures

I propose a “Culture First” way of looking at ancient remains, instead of the “Culture Last” assumption so pervasive in the field.

www.johnhawks.net

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Simon J. Greenhill, Philip N. Cohen , and 6 more Joanna Bryson, Simon J. Greenhill, Philip N. Cohen, E. Wayne Ross, Beatriz Gallardo Paúls, Alfie Kohn, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Stuart Shapiro, David Darmofal

Todd Alcott @toddalcott.bsky.social · 3d

The sign on Kristi Noem's podium reads "One of ours, all of yours." The reader will recall that this was a fascist rallying cry in the Spanish Civil War. What it means is that one of "our" people is worth all of "your" people.

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 3d

ah the beautiful sounds of a NZ summer holiday at the beach. Waves crashing on the sand, tuis singing in the pohutukawa, the soft sound of cricket on the neighbors tv. And every five minutes (usually just as I’ve picked up the book i want to read): “Daddy I’m bored”.

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Colette Delawalla @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 4d

“Things are not bad at all.”

(Bullet holes in the CDC building)

Reposted by Noelle E. Selin, Jesse H. Kroll, Simon J. Greenhill , and 7 more Noelle E. Selin, Jesse H. Kroll, Simon J. Greenhill, Michael A. Clemens, Ingo Rohlfing, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Michelle L. Mazurek, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Sylvia Perry, David Darmofal

Colette Delawalla @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 4d

This is a HUGE win…and one that happened because we ~collectively~ said “NO!”

But AAAS coming in and saying on record to the NYT “Science is doing ok. Things are not bad at all…” is baffling.

If things are hard for you as a scientist, please share in the comments.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/s...

Congress Is Reversing Trump’s Steep Budget Cuts to Science

www.nytimes.com

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 4d

Indeed

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 4d

HSSC is unusual in that you can just ask to be on their editorial board To handle papers. www.nature.com/palcomms/jou...

Client Challenge

www.nature.com

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 4d

Shame on the Royal Society. It seems fairly clear and simple that Musk breaches code of conduct.

Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 4d

And if you want a list of the reasons that have been given for keeping Musk as FRS, there's this piece deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/02/seve...

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 4d

And if you want a list of the reasons that have been given for keeping Musk as FRS, there's this piece deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/02/seve...

Reposted by Steven French, Simon J. Greenhill, Fabián Muniesa , and 3 more Steven French, Simon J. Greenhill, Fabián Muniesa, Michael Zimmer, Margot C. Finn, Dan Hicks

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 5d

Musk should remain member of UK Royal Society, says president ft.trib.al/tC0vaAa

Musk should remain member of UK Royal Society, says president

Paul Nurse tells FT that national science academy should avoid ‘making judgments’ about ‘character’ of fellows

ft.trib.al

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

MPI-EVA Leipzig @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social · 7d

🦴🔬 773,000-year-old #fossils from Morocco illuminate the shared ancestry of H. sapiens, Neandertals & Denisovans. Study @nature.com by an intl. team led by J.-J. Hublin, incl. @matthewskinnerphd.bsky.social & P. Gunz @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social. tinyurl.com/yxz4kcff & www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Early hominins from Morocco reveal an African lineage near the root of Homo sapiens

Study pinpoints 773,000-year-old fossils with high-resolution magnetostratigraphic dating, illuminating the shared ancestry of Homo sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans

tinyurl.com

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill, Jussi T. Eronen

Dahlem Center for Linguistics @dclberlin.bsky.social · 7d

#OTD 124 years ago, George K. Zipf (1902–1950)was born 🎂 Based on his corpus analyses, he formulated the so-called Zipf’s law and showed that the most frequent word is twice as frequent as the second, three times as frequent as the third, and so on.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

yes. I get more and more paranoid about code now. It takes me 3x longer to write things because I obsessively write tests and checks and code defensively because I've been bitten too many times.

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

Cool project, cool place, cool supervisor!

John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · 8d

I'm hiring! 2 x PhD positions to work at Uni Zurich with me on "Evolutionary Semantics" for an ERC-funded project. semantically curious MA grads from linguistics, cog psych, anthro encouraged to apply
evolvinglanguage.ch/studying-the...

Studying the Evolution of Abstract Thought - NCCR Evolving Language

In the new ERC-funded project, “Conceptual Diversity and the Evolution of Abstract Thought” (CONCEVO), Mansfield will lead a team of researchers to develop a method for reconstructing the evolution of...

evolvinglanguage.ch

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

I think this is most science journalism Sadly!

And I think they all miss one of the big motivators for most researchers I know: “hey isn’t it weird that …?”

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

I know a rogue state when I see one.

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

cool! with alphafold? anything published on this that you could point me to?

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

Do I know anyone working on LLMs and Language Change?

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · 8d

Studying the Evolution of Abstract Thought - NCCR Evolving Language

evolvinglanguage.ch

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

John Hawks @johnhawks.net · 8d

New in @nytimes.com on how some research on human origins and genetics are being cut from federal science programs. @carlzimmer.com interviews Brenna Henn, who has done much to illuminate the genetic variation and history of southern African peoples.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/s...

She Wanted to Improve Genetic Medicine

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Joanna Bryson

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

What a loss - her work has been deeply informative.

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 9d

Here's my latest contribution to the @nytimes "Lost Science" series. Brenna Henn's sweeping study of African genetics has been frozen. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Ypmm1A

Portrait of Brenna Henn next to an open freezer of samples.

Reposted by Jason Mittell, Richard S.J. Tol, Ken Caldeira , and 12 more Jason Mittell, Richard S.J. Tol, Ken Caldeira, Steve Peers, Simon J. Greenhill, Richard Ashby Wilson, Amir Attaran, Paul Goldstein, Kevin Carey, Alan Richardson, Richard Larouche, David Szakonyi, Manisha Sinha, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe

The Onion @theonion.com · 8d

Nicolás Maduro Charged With Felony Oil Possession

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Simon J. Greenhill, Marta Mìrazón Lahr

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 9d

Here's my latest contribution to the @nytimes "Lost Science" series. Brenna Henn's sweeping study of African genetics has been frozen. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Ypmm1A

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