The Arrival Of Rice Domestication In India

The wild form of rice has been gathered and eaten in parts of India since the Holocene climate optimum began ca. 7000 BCE, but domesticated rice appeared much later, although it did pre-date the arrival of the Indo-Aryan in India. This timing largely coincides with the arrival of the linguistically Austro-Asiatic Munda people (in a male dominate migration) to India from Southeast Asia.

The nature and timing of rice domestication and the development of rice cultivation in South Asia is much debated. In northern South Asia there is presently a significant gap (c.4200 years) between earliest evidence for the exploitation of wild rice (Lahuradewa c.6000 BCE) and earliest dated evidence for the utilisation of fully domesticated rice (Mahagara c.1800 BCE). The Indus Civilisation (c.3000–1500 BCE) developed and declined during the intervening period, and there has been debate about whether rice was adopted and exploited by Indus populations during this ‘gap’. 

This paper presents new analysis of spikelet bases and weeds collected from three Indus Civilisation settlements in north-west India, which provide insight into the way that rice was exploited. This analysis suggests that starting in the period before the Indus urban phase (Early Harappan) and continuing through the urban (Mature Harappan/Harappan), post-urban (Late Harappan) and on into the post-Indus Painted Grey Ware (PGW) period, there was a progressive increase in the proportion of domesticated-type spikelet bases and a decrease in wild-types. 

This pattern fits with a model of the slow development of rice exploitation from wild foraging to agriculture involving full cultivation. Importantly, the accompanying weeds show no increased proportions of wetland species during this period. Instead a mix of wetland and dryland species was identified, and although these data are preliminary, they suggest that the development of an independent rice tradition may have been intertwined with the practices of the eastern most Indus peoples. 

These data also suggest that when fully domesticated Oryza sativa ssp. japonica was introduced around 2000 BCE, it arrived in an area that was already familiar with domesticated rice cultivation and a range of cultivation techniques.

J. Bates, et al., "Approaching rice domestication in South Asia: New evidence from Indus settlements in northern India" Journal of Archaeological Science (November 21, 2016).

From the body text:

2. Background 

2.1. Rice domestication and South Asia 

Modern domesticated rice, Oryza sativa, has a complex history as it is the product of repeated instances of hybridization. Current genetic evidence suggests that it developed from the hybridization of two other domesticated forms: O. sativa ssp. japonica, which is a Chinese rice domesticated from wild O. rufipogon around 4000 BCE ( Fuller and Weisskopf, 2011), and O. sativa ssp. indica, which is a domesticated version of the South Asian O. sativa ssp. nivara (Fuller et al., 2010). Based on this evidence, Fuller, 2005, Fuller, 2006 and Fuller, 2011 has suggested that O. sativa ssp. indica may have been domesticated many times, including during what he has referred to as a ‘proto-indica’ phase of cultivation (Fuller, 2011). Using a combination of genetics, the modern distribution of wild rice species, and archaeological evidence, Fuller, 2002, Fuller, 2005, Fuller, 2006, Fuller, 2011 and Fuller and Weisskopf, 2011) has also suggested that one of these domestication events may potentially have taken place in the Ganges region of India. 

Fuller and Madella (2002) have, however, long argued that the archaeological evidence for rice exploitation in South Asia is patchy and often inconclusive. Based on what is available, Fuller (2011: 82) has proposed that the “independent rice tradition in north India […] never […] proceeded on its own to full domestication” until the arrival of O. sativa ssp. japonica c.2000 BCE. 

The earliest evidence for rice cultivation in South Asia comes from the site of Lahuradewa, which is situated in the Middle Ganges plains in north India.  Tewari et al. (2008) have recovered charred rice grains from the site that have been radio-carbon dated to 6409 BCE (8359 cal BP) (Tewari et al., 2008: 350), and based on grain length, width and thickness ratios they have suggested that the rice was a domesticated variety. Fuller et al. (2010) have, however, noted that the morphometrics for these grains from Lahuradewa overlap significantly with those of wild grains, and have therefore argued that Lahuradewa could instead represent the beginnings of a long history of cultivation of wild rice that continues throughout the sites occupation. Other sites such as Balu, Banawali and Kunal ( Saraswat and Pokharia, 2000, Saraswat and Pokharia, 2002 and Saraswat and Pokharia, 2003) provide evidence of rice that is poorly dated but roughly place its use within the third millennium BC (see below) while wild rice was also noted at Senuwar 2 in the Middle Ganges (Saraswat, 2005). Until recently the earliest evidence for domesticated rice based on spikelet base evidence was from the site of Mahagara in the same region, c.1800–1600 BCE. However, as Fuller et al. (2010) have remarked, this attestation is representative of the end of the process of domestication, and is likely to date close to the point when there was a hybridization between O. sativa ssp. indica/O. nivara and O. sativa ssp. japonica. 

The presence of rice at sites like Kunal, Balu, Banawali and Harappa (Saraswat and Pokharia, 2000, Saraswat and Pokharia, 2002, Saraswat and Pokharia, 2003 and Weber, 2003) has led scholars to question the role of the Indus Civilisation in the development of rice cultivation systems and even in rice domestication (e.g. Fuller and Madella, 2002 and Fuller, 2011). Evidence for rice in northern South Asia in the period between the first exploitation of rice (whether wild or domesticated) at Lahuradewa and the later appearance of clearly domesticated agriculturally grown rice at sites like Mahagara has been eagerly sought, and it has been suggested that Indus Civilisation settlements could provide it (e.g. Fuller, 2002, Fuller, 2006 and Fuller, 2011). The next section will explore how these debates have evolved. 

2.2. Rice exploitation by Indus Civilisation populations 

Indus Civilisation populations inhabited the north-west of South Asia between c.3000–1500 BCE, and although settlements were primarily distributed in the Indus and Punjab drainage basin, Indus populations also occupied parts of the Kanuma-Ganges doab, where theoretically they could have come in contact with, and adopted, rice from the Gangetic region (Fuller and Madella, 2002). 

Arguments for and against the use of rice by Indus populations began when impressions of rice grains were observed in pottery from Indus settlement sites in Gujarat and Rajasthan (e.g. Ghosh and Lal, 1963 and Vishnu-Mittre and Savithri, 1975). Evidence of rice grains has also been recovered from several sites in northwest India (e.g. Early Harappan Kunal, Saraswat and Pokharia, 2003; Early Harappan Balu, Saraswat and Pokharia, 2002; Mature Harappan Banawali), but these attestations have not been securely dated, and the chronology presented in the reports is opaque. Evidence of rice phytoliths from Harappa was presented by Fujiwara et al. (1992) who tentatively dated some of their samples to the Mature Harappan period, confirmed by Madella (2003) in contexts c. 2200 BCE, although the only macrobotanical evidence for rice grains from the site places it in the Late Harappan period ( Weber, 1997 and Weber, 2003). As such Possehl (1999: 246) has argued that there is no evidence for rice cultivation before the Mature Harappan period (i.e. pre-c.2500 BCE). Fuller and Madella (2002: 336–7) have argued that “rice was available as a crop […] but not adopted” and “there is no reason as yet to believe it was an important crop”, while Fuller and Qin (2009) have argued that there is no evidence of rice agriculture until the Late Harappan period c.2000 BCE, when it is likely O. sativa ssp. japonica arrived. More recently Madella (2014: 230) has considered whether the role of rice changed over time from a secondary crop in the late Mature Harappan to become a staple crop either in the Late Harappan periods or the Early Historic periods. He suggested that rice may have been a secondary but sought after product by Indus Civilisation peoples, explaining its appearance at Harappa, outside its natural habitat and in only small quantities. Madella (2014: 230) also argued that rice only became a staple when its status as a rare crop was lost as superior strains were introduced c. 1900BCE, and as diversification in agricultural strategies occurred during the Late Harappan period and into post-Harappan periods. 

Three major issues arise from these interpretations. Firstly, there has been a consistent lack of systematic archaeobotanical sampling from Indus sites and many of the rice remains recovered have been of the larger and more obvious grains (Bates, 2015). Secondly, models that differentiate wild gathering, semi-domesticated or wild cultivation, and domesticated agriculture have been developed without an assessment of the spikelet bases at Indus settlements to ascertain how the numerical proportions of wild and domesticated varieties changed over time. Furthermore, the dating of rice use at Indus Civilisation settlements remains problematic (Petrie et al., 2016a). 

A lack of systematic archaeobotanical sampling has long bedevilled South Asian archaeology, and the evidence from Indus sites has typically been presented as presence/absence data with little indication of how crop seed grains were recovered. Furthermore, although it has long been argued that grains alone are not suitable for analysis of domestication (Thompson, 1996, Harvey, 2006 and Fuller and Weisskopf, 2011), archaeobotanical publications for South Asian sites typically only discuss grains, and neglect to consider weeds and crop processing residues. 

There have been several attempts to differentiate wild and domesticated rice in South Asia. Harvey (2006) conducted studies comparing the length: width: thickness ratios of rice reference and archaeological material and concluded that there was too much overlap in the morphometrics of wild and domesticated species, in particular between the wild O. nivara and O. rufipogon, and between O. nivara and its domesticated form, O. sativa ssp. indica. Recently Castillo et al. (2015) have re-evaluated the use of grain morphometrics to distinguish domestication in rice, and have suggested that some distinction can be made between O. sativa ssp. indica and japonica, but they also note that no distinction can be made between wild and domesticated rice grains using this method. In contrast, spikelet bases have been observed to change morphologically during the domestication process, due to changes in seed dispersal mechanisms (Thompson, 1996). Wild spikelet bases have smooth scars as the rachis shatters to allow for seed dispersal, while domesticated spikelet base scars are rough, because the rachis is non-shattering (Harvey, 2006 and Thompson, 1996). Spikelet bases are far smaller than grains, and are often not visible to the naked eye in soil, so they are likely to have been missed at sites where only hand-collecting of remains has been carried out. Analysis of the smaller fractions of floated samples is necessary for gathering such data, but this approach is not often carried out in South Asian excavations (Harvey, 2006). 

The complexities of this situation are compounded by the fact that the dating of Indus rice in particular remains vexed. Although rice grains have been noted from the Early and Mature Harappan site of Balu (Saraswat and Pokharia, 2002 and Saraswat, 2002), the contexts from which these grains come is unclear, and the date of rice use is difficult to ascertain. For example, the Early and Mature Harappan occupation at Balu has been given the date range of 2300–1700 BCE (Saraswat and Pokharia, 2002 and Saraswat, 2002), which spans both the Mature and Late Harappan periods (Petrie et al., 2016a). The presence of rice has also been noted at Kunal (Saraswat and Pokharia, 2003), but the lack of clear contextual information again makes assessing the precise date of its use difficult to ascertain (Petrie et al., 2016a). 

In addition to these issues, the date and impact of the shift to wetland rice cropping has also been debated. For example, Coningham (1995: 66–67) has hypothesised that during the post-Indus period there were changes in the methods of growing crops, particularly rice, with a shift from dry to wet land rice. He speculated that with wetland rice exploitation there might have been an increase in yield (kg per acre), which could have supported the rise of even larger urban centres than seen in the preceding Indus Civilisation period (Coningham, 1995: 66–67). This argument was based on the presumed preference for different ecologies of the two main rice crops, as both the wild nivara and domesticated indica grow in drier conditions than rufipogon or japonica. However, Fuller and Qin (2009) have noted that all rice species prefer wetter conditions, and can be exploited in a wide range of conditions. They have instead argued that hybridization did not necessarily have to lead to a sudden shift in cropping system towards wetland irrigated rice, and that a more mixed strategy may have been seen, with a range of wet and dry cropping exploited an it is today in some areas of South Asia (Fuller and Qin, 2009). Exploring when wetland rice was introduced and the impact it had is, however, important as wetland systems do increase yield as noted by Coningham (1995). In order to identify this transition, the weed flora must be considered, but it is often not reported in detail in archaeobotanical studies (Fuller and Qin, 2009). In the absence of weed data, Fuller and Qin (2009: 104) relied on the percentage-presence of wet and dry weed taxa from several sites across northern India from the Neolithic to Early Historic periods, and suggested that an increase in the amount of wetland species and a decrease in the presence of dryland species is evident, with only dryland species disappearing over time. However, their study does not take into account the role of the Indus Civilisation in this process. Given the new finds of securely dated rice grains (Petrie et al., 2016a) and the associated spikelet bases reported in this study, the Indus Civilisation becomes an important part of the picture of rice cultivation strategies in the subcontinent. 

Our understanding of rice exploitation by Indus populations and the development of rice agriculture during this period in South Asia thus remains patchy and poorly understood, as highlighted by Fuller and Madella in 2002. This paper will attempt to fill some of these gaps and consider how rice exploitation may have developed over time in north-western South Asia. To do this, it will present new archaeobotanical data from settlement sites in northwest India, which lies in the north-east of the Indus region.

The study itself made the core finding that while domesticated rice was present in the Mature Harappan period (pre-1900 BCE), that most rice consumed was of the wild type. In contrast, only domesticated rice was used after that time period in the Late Harappan period.

Table 1.

Periodisation of the Indus Civilisation (after Possehl, 2002:29).

Stage	Dates
Early Harappan	3200–2600 BCE
Early-Mature Harappan Transition	2600–2500 BCE
Mature Harappan	2500–1900 BCE
Late Harappan	1900–1300 BCE
Painted Grey Ware (PGW) (early Iron Age)	1300–500 BCE

Table 2.

Number of spikelet bases per 20l sediment and as a proportion of spikelet bases from Mature and Late Harappan contexts at Masudpur VII.

Rice spikelet base type	Context 514	Mature Harappan (%)	Context 515	Late Harappan (%)
Wild	135	75.84%	0	0%
Domesticated	17	9.55%	2	28.57%
Immature	26	14.61%	3	42.86%
Uncertain	0	0%	2	28.57%

Hunter Gatherers Burned Down Europe's Forests 20,000 Years Ago

Mass man made ecological destruction is nothing new.

When humans reached Australia, one of the main activities that accompanied this megafauna extinction event was the setting of many large scale wildfires. New research establishes that this also happened in Europe around 20,000 years ago.

Reconstructions of the vegetation of Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) are an enigma. Pollen-based analyses have suggested that Europe was largely covered by steppe and tundra, and forests persisted only in small refugia. Climate-vegetation model simulations on the other hand have consistently suggested that broad areas of Europe would have been suitable for forest, even in the depths of the last glaciation. 

Here we reconcile models with data by demonstrating that the highly mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that inhabited Europe at the LGM could have substantially reduced forest cover through the ignition of wildfires. Similar to hunter-gatherers of the more recent past, Upper Paleolithic humans were masters of the use of fire, and preferred inhabiting semi-open landscapes to facilitate foraging, hunting and travel. 

Incorporating human agency into a dynamic vegetation-fire model and simulating forest cover shows that even small increases in wildfire frequency over natural background levels resulted in large changes in the forested area of Europe, in part because trees were already stressed by low atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the cold, dry, and highly variable climate. Our results suggest that the impact of humans on the glacial landscape of Europe may be one of the earliest large-scale anthropogenic modifications of the earth system.

Jed O. Kaplan, Mirjam Pfeiffer, Jan C. A. Kolen, Basil A. S. Davis. "Large Scale Anthropogenic Reduction of Forest Cover in Last Glacial Maximum Europe." 11 (11) PLOS ONE: e0166726 (November 30, 2016).

A press release at Science News is more direct than the abstract about what researchers have concluded:

Large-scale forest fires started by prehistoric hunter-gatherers are probably the reason why Europe is not more densely forested. . . .

Deliberate or negligent 

. . . It may be that during the coldest phase of the last Ice Age, some 20,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers deliberately lit forest fires in an attempt to create grasslands and park-like forests. They probably did this to attract wild animals and to make it easier to gather vegetable food and raw materials; it also facilitated movement. Another possibility is that the large-scale forests and steppe fires may have been the result of the hunters' negligent use of fire in these semi-open landscapes. 

Large-scale impact of humans on landscape 

The researchers combined analyses of Ice Age accumulations of silt and computer simulations with new interpretations of archaeological data. They show that hunters throughout Europe, from Spain to Russia, were capable of altering the landscape. This first large-scale impact of humans on landscape and vegetation would have taken place more than 20,000 years before the industrial revolution. The Ice Age is often presented as an era of extreme cold and snow that was ruled by mammoths, bison and giant bears. But the researchers show that humans were also capable of having a significant impact on the landscape. 

Layers of ash 

Searching for evidence of this human impact explains why there are conflicting reconstructions for this period. Reconstructions of the vegetation based on pollen and plant remains from lakes and marshland suggest that Europe had an open steppe vegetation. But computer simulations based on eight possible climate scenarios show that under natural conditions the landscape in large areas of Europe would have been far more densely forested. The researchers conclude that humans must have been responsible for the difference. Further evidence has been found in the traces of the use of fire in hunting settlements from this period and in the layers of ash in the soil.

Did The Crusades Fuel The Development Of The Modern State?

Two economists make an intriguing, but not entirely convincing case that the Crusades of the Middle Ages played a pivotal role in the rise of the modern state. When did they happen?

There is general agreement among historians on the numbering of the first five crusades: the First Crusade, 1096–1102 CE; Second Crusade, 1147–49 CE; Third Crusade, 1188–92 CE; Fourth Crusade, 1202–04 CE; and Fifth Crusade, 1217–21 CE. Some have argued for the relevance of three additional numbered crusades (the Sixth Crusade, 1227–29 CE; Seventh Crusade, 1248–54 CE; and Eighth Crusade 1270–72 CE)[.]

Particularly notable is the article's revelation that the Crusades were largely financed with the personal wealth of the elite military leaders of the campaigns raised largely through the sale of their real estate.

A variety of sources suggest that the primary crusade participants were members of the European elite—including nobles, knights, and monarchs—as well as the full complement of individuals who might accompany elites on such a journey. Part of the reason that elites were crusade participants was that the costs of raising the funds necessary to participate would be difficult, even for the affluent, and virtually impossible for poor nobles who might be required to raise up to four times their annual income. This is not to say that elites were the numerical majority of travelers to the Holy Land; historians have suggested that nobles and knights in the First Crusade, for example, traveled with at least three to four times their numbers in squires, grooms, and other staff. But it was the elites who “took up the cross” and most of what is known about the crusaders is drawn from charters that document the preparations of elite participants.

The abstract and citation to the article are as follows:

Holy Land Crusades were among the most significant forms of military mobilization to occur during the medieval period. Crusader mobilization had important implications for European state formation. We find that areas with large numbers of Holy Land crusaders witnessed increased political stability and institutional development as well as greater urbanization associated with rising trade and capital accumulation, even after taking into account underlying levels of religiosity and economic development. Our findings contribute to a scholarly debate regarding when the essential elements of the modern state first began to appear. Although our causal mechanisms— which focus on the importance of war preparation and urban capital accumulation— resemble those emphasized by previous research, we date the point of critical transition to statehood centuries earlier, in line with scholars who emphasize the medieval origins of the modern state. We also point to one avenue by which the rise of Muslim military and political power may have affected European institutional development.

Lisa Blaydes and Christopher Paik, "The Impact of Holy Land Crusades on State Formation: War Mobilization, Trade Integration, and Political Development in Medieval Europe", International Organization / FirstView Article / May 2016, pp 1 - 36 (May 30, 2016).

Asymptotic Gravity Doesn't Play Well With Other Beyond The Standard Model Theories

One possible way to integrate gravity and the Standard Model of Particle Physics is called 'asymptotic gravity", in which the gravitational coupling constant runs with energy scale to an ultraviolet fixed point.

It turns out that this theory is inconsistent with many beyond the Standard Model theories, because the structure of the theory limits the number of extra-dimensions and fundamental particles that a theory can have while remaining consistent with the theory. 

For what it is worth, the author really make you work to see in the body text of their paper that their conclusion holds in ways that surely could have been explained much more clearly. But, the conclusion is still buried in there.

It is consistent with the minimum particle content, the particle content of the Standard Model, in either four or five dimensions, but not more. (We know that there are at least four dimensions.)

We conclude that, within the truncation specified above, and for a fixed number of vectors, there is an upper bound on the number of fermions and scalars that are compatible with asymptotic safety. The standard model has 12 vectors (1 photon, 8 gluons and 3 weak bosons), 4 scalars (one Higgs and three Goldstone modes that are “eaten up” by the weak bosons and become their longitudinal degrees of freedom) and 45/2 Dirac fermions. The non-integer number of fermions arises, since the standard model is chiral, i.e., it is constructed from Weyl fermions. In the gravitational β functions, a Dirac fermion essentially equals two Weyl fermions. As the standard model does not include right-handed neutrinos, it contains 45 Weyl fermions. . . . Generally, the allowed region in the NS, ND-plane for fixed NV shrinks rapidly, as the number of extra dimension is increased. We conclude that an experimental discovery of universal extra dimension could pose a challenge for the asymptotic safety scenario. Note that scenarios in which only gravity can propagate into the extra dimensions are not restricted by these results.

In four dimensions, it could handle up to three more spin-1/2 fermions (such as right handed neutrinos) and up to 2 more scalars. Basically, two scalars equals one Dirac fermion that is both left and right handed, for purposes of the matter content budget of the theory.

Asymptotic gravity is not compatible with the particle content of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), an SU(5) GUT, or an SU(10) GUT theory. This is because: "a large number of scalars and fermions cannot be accommodated, unless a large number of vectors is postulated at the same time." In particular:

We now turn to supersymmetric models, which must contain a gravitino. As it contributes to the beta function for G with the same sign as the graviton, it allows to extend the number of matter fields slightly in comparison to the gravitino-less case. In particular, simple SUGRA still admits a viable gravitational fixed point. The MSSM+SUGRA, however, contains too many fermions and lies in the excluded region. 

. . .

In this work, we have added the contribution of spin- 3/2 gravitinos. We find that a model of pure supergravity admits an asymptotically safe gravitational fixed point. If we add matter, bounds on the number of allowed matter fields persists. In particular, the matter content of the MSSM is not compatible with a viable fixed point within a model with one graviton and one gravitino.

But, if the fermion superpartners in a supersymmetric theory were vector bosons instead of scalar bosons, these bounds wouldn't be a barrier to merging asymptotic gravity and supersymmetry, however.

More Top Quark Mass Measurement Data From The LHC

The News

The latest top quark mass data:

The combined ATLAS result from the √ s = 7 TeV dileptonic and semileptonic tt¯ measurements yields a value of mtop = 172.99 ± 0.48 (stat) ± 0.78 (syst) GeV. Additional precision is to be expected with the inclusion of √ s = 8 TeV measurements. The combined CMS result of mtop = 172.44 ± 0.13 (stat) ±0 .47 (syst) GeV is based on all √ s =7 and 8 TeV measurements performed in the three standard tt¯ decay channels. The results of both experiments are in good agreement. 

While future measurements at √ s = 13 TeV will recognizably benefit from higher statistics, the reduction of several theoretical uncertainties would further allow for improved precision in both the indirect measurements from the production cross-sections and those analyses which avoid employing jets in the construction of an observable sensitive to mtop.

From the conclusion of this preprint.

A previous low precision CMS report using a hadronic channel not included in the CMS average above is here. It reported a top quark mass of 173.5 ± 3.13 GeV.

The final Tevatron mass measurement for the top quark was 174.30 ± 0.65 GeV.

The combined ATLAS error is ± 0.92 GeV. The combined CMS error is ± 0.49 GeV. The range of the independent average top quark mass measurements is 1.86 GeV.

The most recent previous ATLAS report is here. A summary of recent Higgs and top quark mass are here.

Global Average Top Quark Mass

Currently, the Particle Data Group bases its top quark mass estimate on the Tevatron data without resorting to the LHC data, but that will probably change in the 2017 edition.

The inverse error weighted average of the three main results plus the CMS hadronic channel is 173.20 GeV. 

Excluding the CMS hadronic channel (which there is no good reason to do in an error weighted measurement), the inverse error weighted average is 173.18 GeV.

All of the leading results cited above are consistent with this global average at the two sigma level, although I can't easily work out the precise new margin error for the global average myself.

Theoretical Conjecture Expectations For The Top Quark Mass

If the the sum of the square of the boson masses equals the sum of the square of the fermion masses equals one half of the Higgs vacuum expectation value, the implied top quark mass is 174.03 GeV if pole masses of the quarks are used, and 174.05 GeV if MS masses at typical scales are used. The pole mass is really more fundamental, so the 174.03 GeV expected top quark mass is probably the better one to use (but the MS masses for the non-top quarks in the measurement are more precise).

This is 0.83 GeV and 0.85 GeV, respectively, above the complete global average, and 0.85 GeV and 0.87 GeV, respectively, above the global average of the precision measurements. Of these for differences, I suspect that the 0.83 GeV discrepancy value is most meaningful.

The expected value of the top mass from the formula that the sum of the square of each of the fundamental particle masses equals the square of the Higgs vaccum expectation value (a less stringent condition because the fermion and boson masses don't have to balance), given the global average Higgs boson mass measurement (and using a global fit value of 80.376 GeV for the W boson rather than the PDG value) is 173.73 GeV. The top quark mass can be a little lighter in this scenario because the global average measured value of the Higgs boson mass is a bit heavier than under the more stringent condition.

This is 0.53 GeV above the complete global average and is 0.55 GeV above the global average of the precision measurements, but this discrepancy will increase if the Higgs boson value falls.

All of these values are consistent at the two sigma level with the global average of both all an all of the precision the top quark mass measurements.

Thus, it is my prediction that the new ATLAS √ s = 8 TeV measurements, and eventually the new ATLAS and CMS √ s = 13 TeV measurements will tend to push up the global average by some amount less than 0.83 GeV.  The ATLAS results, due to the higher statistical error and higher systemic error are more likely to be significantly different than the old data points than the CMS results (whose error margins, quite frankly, look unrealistically low and may be underestimated).

A Footnote On The Higgs Mass and Theoretical Conjecture Expectations For It

For convenience, I'll recap my prior posts on the Higgs boson mass in this post even though this post contains no new information on the Higgs boson mass.

The current global average of the Higgs boson mass 125.09 +/- 0.24 GeV is based upon the following data points:

* ATLAS diphoton mass 126.02 +/- 0.51 GeV

* ATLAS four lepton mass 124.51 +/- 0.52 GeV

* CMS diphoton mass 124.7 +/- 0.34 GeV

* CMS four lepton mass 125.59 +/- 0.45 GeV

The latest measurement of the Higgs boson mass (based upon four lepton events) by CMS, which is not included in that global average, was 124.5 +0.48/-0.46 GeV.  So, after this new CMS data point, the new global average should be roughly 124.82 GeV with a very similar margin of error (perhaps 0.25 GeV since the new CMS four lepton measurement isn't quite as precise as the old value), before accounting for any new ATLAS results. 

The new CMS data point also makes the ATLAS diphoton data point look like an outlier relative to the other three measurements, which suggests that the combined average is more likely to fall than to rise when ATLAS releases its next Higgs boson diphoton decay based mass measurement. A new ATLAS diphoton result will most likely bring the global average Higgs boson mass to something between 124.65 GeV and 124.82 GeV.

A Higgs boson mass of 124.65 GeV is theoretically notable because it is the value of the Higgs boson mass if if the the sum of the square of the boson masses equals the sum of the square of the fermion masses equals one half of the square of the Higgs vacuum expectation value.

Improved Strong Force Coupling Constant Measurements

The four-loop determination of the strong coupling from fully inclusive observables is reviewed. Special attention is given to the low-energy measurement extracted from the hadronic τ decay width. A recent exhaustive analysis of the ALEPH data, exploring several complementary methodologies with very different sensitivities to inverse power corrections and duality violations, confirms the strong suppression of non-perturbative contributions to Rτ. It gives the value αs(m^2τ)=0.328±0.013, which implies αs(M^2Z)=0.1197±0.0015. The excellent agreement with the direct measurement at the Z peak, αs(M^2Z)=0.1196±0.0030, provides a beautiful test of asymptotic freedom. Together with the most recent lattice average from FLAG and the NNLO determinations from e+e−, PDFs and collider data quoted by the PDG, these two inclusive determinations imply a world average value αs(M^2Z)=0.1180±0.0010.

Antionia Rich, "Precision physics with QCD" (Pre-Print December 15, 2016).

The current global average value for the strong force coupling constant before this new report was 0.1182±0.0012. So, the mean value has dropped by 0.0002 and the precision has increased by 16%.

The Plague Ravaged Europe When First Wave Neolithic Farming Collapsed

Eurogenes mentions a paper using ancient disease DNA to track the arrival of the plague in late Neolithic and early Bronze Age Europe, around the time of the 4.2 kiloyear climate event, particularly in Bell Beaker and Indo-European controlled areas. Another paper he identified a little more than a year ago also points to this conclusion.

Molecular signatures of Yersinia pestis were recently identified in prehistoric Eurasian individuals, thus suggesting Y. pestis might have caused some form of plague in humans prior to the first historically documented pandemic. Here, we present four new Y. pestis genomes from the European Late Neolithic and Bronze Age (LNBA) dating from 4,500 to 3,700 BP. We show that all currently investigated LNBA strains form a single genetic clade in the Y. pestis phylogeny that appears to be extinct today. Interpreting our data within the context of recent ancient human genomic evidence, which suggests an increase in human mobility during the LNBA, we propose a possible scenario for the spread of Y. pestis during the LNBA: Y. pestis may have entered Europe from Central Eurasia during an expansion of steppe pastoralists, possibly persisted within Europe until the mid Bronze Age, and moved back towards Central Eurasia in subsequent human population movements.

Valtuena et al., The Stone Age Plague: 1000 years of Persistence in Eurasia, bioRxiv, Posted December 15, 2016. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/094243

From the body of the new paper:

The first indication of plague in Europe is found in the Baltic region and coincides with the time of the arrival of the steppe component (Allentoft et al., 2015). The two Late Neolithic Y. pestis genomes from the Baltic in this study were reconstructed from individuals associated with the Corded Ware Complex (Gyvakarai1 and KunilaII). The Baltic Y. pestis genomes are genetically derived from the strain that was found in the ‘Andronovo Complex’ from the Altai region, suggesting that the disease might have spread with steppe pastoralists from Central Eurasia to Eastern and Central Europe during their massive range expansion. 

The younger Late Neolithic Y. pestis genomes from Southern Germany are genetically derived from the Baltic strains and are found in individuals associated with the Bell Beaker Complex. Previous analysis have shown that Bell Beaker individuals from Germany also carry ‘steppe ancestry (Allentoft et al., 2015; Haak et al., 2015). This suggests that Y. pestis may have been spread further southwestwards analogous to the human steppe component. The youngest of the LNBA Y. pestis genomes (RISE505), found also in the Altai region, descends from the Central European strains, and thus suggest a spread back into the eastern steppes.

The overlapping genetic evidence regarding early disease supports an ultimate steppe origin for Bell Beaker people as well, something already indicated by the pre-Bell Beaker presence of Y-DNA R1b on the Southern part of the European steppe. 

But, the fact that the Bell Beaker individuals were found in an area that had relatively recently been under previous Corded Ware control dampens this conclusion or any conclusions that could be drawn about a Northern route origin for the Bell Beaker people. No Bronze Age examples of plague have been found yet in area that was Bell Beaker influenced but was never Corded Ware territory.

This also suggests that immunity may have been particularly important for fitness around the time that lactose tolerance surged in the gene pool, and since milk has immunity boosting Vitamin D in it, the case that lactose tolerance may have had a significant immune system enhancing relevance to the massive selection driven increase in its frequency may be more credible in the face of a highly lethal disease outbreak than it would have been otherwise. If adult milk drinkers survived the plague at a significantly higher rate than adults who did not drink milk, that would give lactose tolerance genes a huge and rapid fitness selection boost.

This paper also tends to support a remote Asian origin for the plague that then migrated to Europe, as opposed to a European origin. But, since it predates any historically attested plague outbreak in either Europe or Asia, and shows an Asian reflux of the disease, it complicates the chronology greatly. It also adds meat to the notion of a shift from inhumation to cremation have a practical fitness benefit in mitigating the spread of the diseases that killed the dead.

The paper doesn't shed light on how virulent this early version of the plague was compared to the Blake Death era in the Middle Ages that killed a third of the population of Europe.

The earlier paper in the journal Cell is as follows:

Summary: The bacteria Yersinia pestis is the etiological agent of plague and has caused human pandemics with millions of deaths in historic times. How and when it originated remains contentious. Here, we report the oldest direct evidence of Yersinia pestis identified by ancient DNA in human teeth from Asia and Europe dating from 2,800 to 5,000 years ago. By sequencing the genomes, we find that these ancient plague strains are basal to all known Yersinia pestis. We find the origins of the Yersinia pestis lineage to be at least two times older than previous estimates. We also identify a temporal sequence of genetic changes that lead to increased virulence and the emergence of the bubonic plague. Our results show that plague infection was endemic in the human populations of Eurasia at least 3,000 years before any historical recordings of pandemics.

Rasmussen et al., Early Divergent Strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 Years Ago, Cell, Volume 163, Issue 3, p571–582, 22 October 2015, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.10.009

Eurogenes also included the following information from a Science Daily press release article:

Study co-author Dr Marta Mirazón-Lahr, from Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES), points out that a study earlier this year from Willerslev's Copenhagen group showed the Bronze Age to be a highly active migratory period, which could have led to the spread of pneumonic plague. 

"The Bronze Age was a period of major metal weapon production, and it is thought increased warfare, which is compatible with emerging evidence of large population movements at the time. If pneumonic plague was carried as part of these migrations, it would have had devastating effects on small groups they encountered," she said. 

"Well-documented cases have shown the pneumonic plague's chain of infection can go from a single hunter or herder to ravaging an entire community in two to three days."

University of Cambridge. "Plague in humans 'twice as old' but didn't begin as flea-borne, ancient DNA reveals." ScienceDaily, 22 October 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151022124532.htm.

Bell Beaker Mound Graves

The tradition of making mound graves established in the Neolithic era and declining as first wave farming in Europe collapsed, discussed in an earlier post this month, changed with the emergence of the Bell Beaker culture.

There is currently much debate over the introduction of Beaker pottery and a set of associated artefacts, including copper objects, into the British Isles between c. 2500 and 2300 BC, but the same kinds of objects were found across large areas of Europe in these centuries and the decades before. A small number of burials have been found very widely dispersed across Britain during this period –some of the most famous are the Amesbury ‘archer’ (who grew up on the Continent) and the Boscombe ‘bowmen’, found near Stonehenge. . . . its worth noting that these early Beaker burials were seemingly not usually covered with a round mound. 

This new burial practice, in which bodies were buried in the ground unburnt, seems to have kick-started a range of other local new local burial practices – most notably . . . across northern Britain people started to bury their dead in what we call ‘short cists’ (boxes averaging about 1m long, made from slabs of stone) with a style of pottery that was inspired by those early Beakers. Many, but not all, of these cists contained just the burial of just one person. Occasionally these were covered with low mounds. Sometimes they formed small groups of two or three burials, and sometimes such groups were then covered with a single round mound. 

In Ireland burial practices involving Beaker pottery were very different to in Britain, but a tradition of burying cremated remains in cists had also developed, associated with a new style of pottery – which archaeologists call Food Vessels. Similar vessels were adopted in parts of Britain too, particularly the north. 

Not all round mounds necessarily covered burials, although this was the case for the vast majority in most regions. Some Early Bronze Age round mounds in the south-west of England seem to have been built without covering any human remains, and some ‘ring’ or ‘kerbed’ cairns in upland parts of Britain had open ground in the middle (imagine a doughnut made of stone) which might have been used for other purposes before human remains were buried in their interiors. Mounds also cover a range of features left by activity other than burying the dead. 

After c. 2100 BC round mounds often covered small groups of such burials. These mounds were generally around 10-12m in diameter, but could be as large as 24m, and increasingly they were added to and enlarged. Such enlargement seems to have often happened when later burials were added to their periphery in the early second millennium BC, and by this time cremation had become predominant again across much of Britain. The recently-excavated burial cairn at Low Hauxley, Northumberland, which Chris worked on, gives a good example of this sequence.

In the south of England, for instance, circles of stake-holes have been found buried under mounds. These may derive from circular fences, for instance, enclosing a central area which was then used to bury the remains of the dead, before a mound was built over the top. . . . Furthermore, the material used to make round mounds is highly worthy of study. In a few cases excavators have noted the special selection of different types of soil, clay, and other materials in layers within a mound. There are a couple of intriguing mentions of layers of different materials in some nineteenth and early twentieth century reports of excavations of Manx round mounds that we will consider, for instance. The use of different materials may have been meaningful in varied ways – for instance, perhaps bringing soil from a place where a person grew up to a place where they lived and died after marrying into a different family, or perhaps significance derived from the colour of the material. 

Finally, exactly where mounds were built in a local landscape is also very interesting, and again this varied regionally and sometimes more locally. In some parts of Britain, for instance, Early Bronze Age mounds clustered into groups around major monuments (as at Stonehenge), sometimes arranged in lines along hill ridges. In other areas mounds were more dispersed. In some cases mounds were built in prominent landscape locations such as hilltops, in others they were on the gentle slopes of hills or placed just below a hilltop. 

A shift to cremation coincides closely with the arrival of Indo-European cultures in India, Iran, Turkey, the Balkans, Greece, and Italy, to name a few. It also associated with the arrival of the "Urnfield culture" that preceded the Celtic people in much of Western Europe. So, I am inclined to think that cremation is a litmus test of a shift to an Indo-European culture replacing a previous non-Indo-European culture, that practice inhumation.

The fact that early Bell Beaker people in Britain employed inhumation in cists is another small piece of evidence to suggest that they were non-Indo-European linguistically and culturally.

But, the pre-Bell Beaker Neolithic use of cremation in Ireland, which persisted into the Bell Beaker era, undermines the usefulness of this litmus test there, and the reappearance of cremation to Britain ca. 2100 BCE, several hundred years after the earliest appearances of the Bell Beaker culture there, is notable. 

Some sort of cultural or religious shift caused this to happen. Why did this cultural or religious shift occur? 

Did local circumstances make cremation more practical than it had been before? After all, the transition from inhumation to cremation in Britain coincides with the 4.2 kiloyear event in Europe which was a time of aridity, crop failures and hardship in a swath of territory including much of Europe, the Near East, West Asia and the Indian subcontinent. This climate event may have also made disease more common which cremation might have controlled better.

Perhaps what looks like a cultural litmus test is really not a matter of migration causing a shift to the culture of the incoming people, but common causation. Climate and scarcity may have made cremation more practical than inhumation, and that same climate and scarcity may have weakened existing regimes thus making Indo-European conquest more feasible.

But, outside Britain, the timing of the shift to cremation seems to be a century or two after the climate shift,  and in places like Italy, much later, so a cultural causation theory may still make more sense.

In an alternative wild possibility, did missionaries bearing Indo-European religious beliefs appear and have an impact before the Indo-Europeans themselves arrived? This seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened and it would not be unprecedented in human history.

Bacterial Control of Gene Expression And Horizontal Gene Transfer In Pillbugs

Pillbug. Roly-poly. Woodlouse. Doodle bug. This endearing creature, which goes by many names, is common throughout North America and Europe. It seeks moisture, scurries from light, and rolls into a ball when threatened. And it often finds itself embroiled in an evolutionary war with a bacterium. At stake is its very sexual identity.

In pillbugs, sex is determined by two chromosomes: Z and W. Individuals who inherit two Zs develop as males, while ZW individuals become female. But in some populations, these rules are overwritten by a microbe called Wolbachia.

Wolbachia infects the cells of pillbugs and only passes down the female line; only mothers can transmit the bacterium to their young. Male embryos are dead ends to Wolbachia, so when it runs into them, it feminizes them by interfering with the development of hormone-producing glands. The result is that all young pillbugs infected with Wolbachia grow up into females, even those that are genetically male. In such populations, the W chromosome tends to disappear altogether. Eventually, all the pillbugs are ZZ, and it’s the presence or absence of Wolbachia that dictates whether they become female or male.

It’s astonishing enough that a microbe should so totally take the reins of sex determination from its host. But this story, which a group of French scientists have pieced together over the last 40 years, now has an even more baffling twist. 

In the 1980s, the French researchers showed that some pillbugs do not have Wolbachia, but act as if they did. They’re all ZZ, but some still develop as females. The researchers proposed that the bacterium has transferred a piece of its DNA into the pillbug’s genome, and that this “feminizing element”—or f-element—was now dictating the animal’s sexes, even in the microbe’s absence. 

With the technology of the 1980s, the researchers had no way of testing their idea. But 30 years on, Richard Cordaux, from the University of Poitiers, has come very close to proving that they were right.

From The Atlantic.

What if this happened to humans instead of pillbugs?

Horizontal gene transfer and long term symbiotic parasitic infections with subtle behavioral effects are not unknown in humans. Maybe it already happens. We are pretty confident that gender variants like homosexuality and transgender identity are biological and usually arise early in life. But, our understanding of why this happens is murky at best. We know that it isn't simply a matter of having or not having a gene, but a variety of theories are competing to explain why this does happen.'

The only fictional portrayal of a fairly similar phenomena is Greg Bear's 1999 novel Darwin's Radio. But, it would surely be a stunning and confusing phenomena to live through and might take decades to understand, just as it did in the case of the pillbugs.

Yet, there is really no good reason why this couldn't happen to humans just as it did to the pillbugs, some day in the future. Humans need some kinds of bacteria to live, so they can't simply destroy all bacteria in their environments. Too strong an antibiotic in your system can cause as much harm as a mildly harmful bacteria. So, the possibility of this kind of horizontal gene transfer or parasitic control of gene expression is always open.

Woit, Glashow and others on SU(5) GUT Theories

Non-detection of proton decay and other forms of baryon number and lepton number violations such as neutrinoless double beta decay and flavor changing neutral currents at the tree level, has killed countless grand unified theories, including the simplest possible one, the SU(5), which Glashow, the physicists who is largely credited with conceiving of it, has now ruled out as not viable.

Turning to physics, there’s a very good new article at Quanta from Natalie Wolchover about the unsuccessful search for proton decay and what this means for grand unification ideas. Glashow has now given up, with the simplest GUTs now conclusively ruled out: 

Glashow, for one, largely lost interest in the whole affair when SU(5) was ruled out. “Proton decay has been a failure,” he said. “So many great ideas have died.” 

Not everyone has given up though, with fans of the “flipped SU(5)” SUSY GUT explaining things this way: 

Barr, one of the originators of the still-viable “flipped SU(5)” GUT model, compared the situation to waiting for your spouse to come home. “If they’re 10 minutes late, there’s simple explanations for that. An hour late, maybe those explanations become a little less plausible. If they’re eight hours late … you begin to worry that maybe your husband or wife is dead. So the point is, at what point do you say your theory is dead?” 

Right now, he said, “we’re more at the point where the spouse is 10 minutes late, or maybe an hour late. It’s still completely plausible that grand unification is correct.” 

Besides the current wishful thinking, this particular model has a strange history. You can read here about how it follows from Vedic Science. Over the years it has been about to come home many times, see this from 2012, which assures us that: 

The CMS and ATLAS experiments have also observed tantalizing hints of the unique signature predicted by the Flipped SU(5) model. 

At this point, it seems to me to be way more than an hour late, time for its nearest and dearest to admit that it’s dead (or maybe has run off with its TM instructor).

From Not Even Wrong.

Lost Civilization In Amazon Attracts Attention Again

Back in 2012, I noted strong new evidence for a lost advanced civilization in the Amazon jungle (by advanced, I mean Neolithic, not futuristic). A New York Times report about the same general archaeological complex is catching people's attention again now for some reason.

The discovery of a Stonehenge-like megalith in the Amazon rainforest has forced researchers to reassess what the region might have looked like 1,000 years ago, centuries before European conquest began, The New York Times reports. Prior to the discovery of the megalith, scholars had believed that the Amazon was relatively untouched by people other than small, nomadic populations. Taken alongside recent discoveries of complex infrastructure like roads, land carvings, and settlements, the megalith has led scholars to consider that instead, as many as 10 million people might have lived in the ancient Amazon. 

The megalith was first discovered by a cattle rancher in the 1960s and appears to align with the sun's movement on the winter solstice, hinting at advances in astronomy. Ceramic burial urns were also found at the site, indicating it might have functioned as a cemetery. "We're starting to piece together the puzzle of the Amazon Basin's human history, and what we're finding in [the Brazilian state of] Amapá is absolutely fascinating," said Mariana Cabral, an archaeologist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais who has spent the last decade working at the site.

From here.

Caste Beyond India

While searching for the legal definition of "gentry" in English law, membership in which was a prerequisite to serving as a Justice of the Peace there, I came across an interesting hypothesis about caste in Indo-European societies, which I quote below at length from Wikipedia:

The Indo-Europeans who settled Europe, Western Asia and the Indian subcontinent conceived their societies to be ordered (not divided) in a tripartite fashion, the three parts being castes.[8] Castes came to be further divided, perhaps as a result of greater specialisation. 

The "classic" formulation of the caste system as largely described by Georges Dumézil was that of a priestly or religiously occupied caste, a warrior caste, and a worker caste. Dumézil divided the Proto-Indo-Europeans into three categories: sovereignty, military, and productivity (see Trifunctional hypothesis). He further subdivided sovereignty into two distinct and complementary sub-parts. One part was formal, juridical, and priestly, but rooted in this world. The other was powerful, unpredictable, and also priestly, but rooted in the "other", the supernatural and spiritual world. The second main division was connected with the use of force, the military, and war. Finally, there was a third group, ruled by the other two, whose role was productivity: herding, farming, and crafts. 

This system of caste roles can be seen in the castes which flourished on the Indian subcontinent and amongst the Italic peoples. 

Examples of the Indo-European castes: 

Indo-Iranian – Brahmin/Athravan, Kshatriyas/Rathaestar, Vaishyas

Roman – Flamines, Milites, Quirites

Celtic – Druids, Equites, Plebes (according to Julius Caesar)

Anglo-Saxon – Gebedmen (prayer-men), Fyrdmen (army-men), Weorcmen (workmen) (according to Alfred the Great)

Slavic – Volkhvs, Voin, Krestyanin/Smerd

Nordic – Earl, Churl, Thrall (according to the Lay of Rig)

Greece (Attica) – Eupatridae, Geomori, Demiurgi

Greece (Sparta) – Homoioi, Perioeci, Helots 

Kings were born out of the warrior or noble class.

[8] Mallory, J.P. In search of the Indo-Europeans Thames & Hudson (1991) p. 131.

The entry on the Trifunctional Hypothesis further explains that:

The trifunctional hypothesis of prehistoric Proto-Indo-European society postulates a tripartite ideology ("idéologie tripartite") reflected in the existence of three classes or castes—priests, warriors, and commoners (farmers or tradesmen)—corresponding to the three functions of the sacral, the martial and the economic, respectively. The trifunctional thesis is primarily associated with the French mythographer Georges Dumézil[1] who proposed it in 1929 in the book Flamen-Brahman,[2] and later in Mitra-Varuna.[3]

Three-way division 

According to Dumézil (1898-1986), Proto-Indo-European society comprised three main groups corresponding to three distinct functions:[2][3] 

* Sovereignty, which fell into two distinct and complementary sub-parts:

* one formal, juridical and priestly but worldly;

* the other powerful, unpredictable, and also priestly but rooted in the supernatural world.

* military , connected with force, the military and war. 

* productivity, herding, farming and crafts; ruled by the other two. 

In the Proto-Indo-European mythology each social group had its own god or family of gods to represent it and the function of the god or gods matched the function of the group. Many such divisions occur in the history of Indo-European societies: 

* Southern Russia: Bernard Sergent associates the Indo-European language family with certain archaeological cultures in Southern Russia and reconstructs an Indo-European religion based upon the tripartite functions.[4] 

* Early Germanic society: The supposed division between the king, nobility and regular freemen in early Germanic society.[5] 

* Norse mythology: Odin (sovereignty), Týr (law and justice), the Vanir (fertility).[6][7][note 1] Odin has been interpreted as a death-god[9] and connected to cremations,[10] and has also been associated with ecstatic practices.[11][10] 

* Classic Greece: The three divisions of the ideal society as described by Socrates in Plato's The Republic. Bernard Sergent examined the trifunctional hypothesis in Greek epic, lyric and dramatic poetry.[12] 

* India: The three Hindu castes, the Brahmans or priests; the Kshatriya, the warriors and military; and the Vaishya, the agriculturalists, cattle rearers and traders.[13] The Shudra, a fourth Indian caste, is an "outer" or serf caste serving the other three. A 2001 study found that the genetic affinity of Indians to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans whereas lower castes are more like Asians. The researchers believe that the Indo-European speakers entered India from the Northwest, mixing with or displacing proto-Dravidian speakers, and may have established a caste system with themselves primarily in higher castes.[14] 

Reception

The hypothesis was embraced outside the field of Indo-European studies by some mythographers, anthropologists, and historians such as Mircea Eliade, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marshall Sahlins, Rodney Needham, Jean-Pierre Vernant and Georges Duby.[16] Supporters of the hypothesis include scholars such as Émile Benveniste, Bernard Sergent and Iaroslav Lebedynsky, who concludes that "the basic idea seems proven in a convincing way".[15] 

On the other hand, Allen[17] concludes that the tripartite division may be an artefact, a selection effect rather than an organizing principle used in the societies themselves. Benjamin W. Fortson reports[18] a sense that Dumézil blurred the lines between the three functions and the examples that he gave often had contradictory characteristics, causing detractors[19] to reject his categories as non-existent. John Brough surmises that societal divisions are common outside of Indo-European societies as well, and consequently the hypothesis has only limited utility in illuminating prehistoric Indo-European society.[20] Cristiano Grottanelli states that while Dumézilian trifunctionalism may be seen in modern and medieval contexts, its projection onto earlier cultures is mistaken.[21] Belier is strongly critical.[22] 

The hypothesis has been criticised by historians Carlo Ginzburg, Arnaldo Momigliano[23] and Bruce Lincoln[24] as being based on Dumézil's sympathies with the political right. Guy G. Stroumsa sees these criticisms as unfounded.[25]

To the extent that this is an accurate characterization of Indo-European society is sheds a powerful light on what it would have been like to live at the time, although some of the applications given to the concept do seem muddy.