More Sophisticated Models Of The Bronze Age

Eurogenes calls attention to a notable new ancient DNA paper in a post entitled "Not Bell Beaker, not Corded Ware, but . . . the SGBR Complex."

Since aDNA research suggested a marked gene influx from Eastern into Central Europe in the 3rd millennium bc, outdated, simplistic narratives of massive migrations of closed populations have re-appeared in archaeological discussions. A more sophisticated model of migration from the steppes was proposed recently by Kristiansen et al. As a reaction to that proposal, this paper aims to contribute to this ongoing debate by refining the latter model, better integrating archaeological data and anthropological knowledge. It is argued that a polythetic classification of the archaeological material in Central Europe in the 3rd millennium reveals the presence of a new complex of single grave burial rituals which transcends the traditional culture labels. Genetic steppe ancestry is mainly connected to this new kind of burials, rather than to Corded Ware or Bell Beaker materials. Here it is argued that a polythetic view on the archaeological record suggests more complicated histories of migration, population mixtures and interaction than assumed by earlier models, and ways to better integrate detailed studies of archaeological materials with a deeper exploration of anthropological models of mobility and social group composition and the molecular biological data are explored.

Furholt, Martin, Re-integrating Archaeology: A Contribution to aDNA Studies and the Migration Discourse on the 3rd Millennium BC in Europe, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, Published online: 10 June 2019, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/ppr.2019.4

The concept of a population genetic and burial practice movement that corresponds only partially with distributions of Bell Beaker and Corded Ware relics is attractive in the wake of new ancient DNDA data showing that Iberian Bell Beakers have less steppe ancestry and more indigenous ancestry than other Continental and British Isle Bell Beaker individuals.

The abstract is referring to Kristian Kristiansen, who studies the Bronze Age at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who is referred to in the journal Nature as on of the field's biggest cheerleaders for Ancient DNA technology, who observes that: “Suddenly there was a lot of free intellectual time to start thinking about prehistoric societies and how they are organized.” (The linked March 2018 review article wonderfully contextualizes the latest movements in the field.) Kristiansen is the lead archaeology in the Copenhagen group, and is associated with a Bronze Age migration model summarized in the following map from a 2018 presentation entitled "The Indo-Europeanization of Europé."

At least one important conclusion in this presentation, which was plausible for a long time, now seems implausible in light of genetic evidence that Davidski at Eurogenes, in particular, has given a great deal of attention.

The Maikop culture prospered from this Mesopotamian venture for metal, and soon expanded into the steppe, where is became the Kurgan or Yamna culture. . . . More and more prehistoric mines, copper and gold, are being recorded and excavated in the Caucasus to support its bridging role between Mesopotamia/Anatolia and the steppe during this period. . . . A recently published Maikop tumulus used stelae and decorated stone slabs for the construction of the chamber, a tradition (stelae) to be found later also in the steppe. These stelae had apparently been reused from older burials, as a demonstra7on of power

The archaeological and ancient DNA evidence increasingly points to the Balkans (with a nexus localized roughly to contemporary Moldova) as the source of that technology in the Yamna culture, although the Mesopotamian-Anatolian-Steppe archaeological links aren't, as observed, entirely absent.

One possible alternative explanation for the archaeological links between the steppe cultures and the Maikop culture, which would be more consistent with the genetic evidence, is that the direction of archaeological influence ran in the other direction, from steppe to Maikop, rather than the other way around as suggested by Kristiansen.

On the other hand, I do credit Kristiansen for two very important thing: (1) an exceptional level of interdisciplinary analysis that is sadly lacking in a lot of ancient DNA work, and (2) a willingness to connect the dots to create plausible narratives even if there is some possibility that they could be incorrect in some respects. And, some parts of the analysis are, in my humble opinion, in light over the evidence correct even though many scholars aren't willing to stick their necks out to say so in such a clear way:

Bell Beaker groups migrated along the Atlantic seaboard, but also into Central northwestern Europe, where they met Corded Ware groups that stopped their expansion and took over the Bell Beaker package before migrating to England.

I also appreciate the skepticism about linguistic assumptions evidenced in statements like this one:

The western expansion of supposed PIE speaking Yamna groups into the Carpathians and their influence areas, versus supposed Bell Beaker groups of supposed proto-Celtic speaking/Latin speaking populations. Corresponds with gene flow of 1rb male lines from the steppe to England 

The following map of Celtic toponyms is particularly interesting:

The summer 2018 presentation sums up with these rather cryptic statements:

The three models: one for each millennium BCE that contributed to formation and distribution Celtic languages 

• 3rd millennium Beaker migrations to UK and north Iberia spread proto italo-celtic 

• 2nd millennium Bronze Age Atlantic trade systems spread languages of proto-Celtic south but interacted with proto-Germanic speaking population to the north 

• 1st millennium: La Tene migrations from Gaul/Belgium to UK spread a Gaulish version of Celtic to Ireland/UK 

• Thus, this later spread came to dominate. It explains why insular Celtic has virtually no connections to the maritime world. 

The new paper from June 2019 does not appear to be open access, but the bibliography, reproduced below the fold without reformatting, is a nice overview of the major recent work in the field.

How To Write An Essay About Hints Of New Physics

A question at the Physics Forums asked for suggestions about how to research and write an article about experimental hints of possible beyond the Standard Model physics, in this case, involving lepton family number violations in B meson decays. Here are some suggestions that I provided. They have broad applicability, so I am reprinting the answer here.

Possible Research Sources

For background information, Wikipedia is always a good starting point, although it should never be your ending point and should only rarely be the reference that you end up actually citing in your article. For example, the articles on Lepton Number, Meson and B Meson in Wikipedia are probably the best starting points in your search because they define key terms and summarize the state of current knowledge at a big picture level.

A comprehensive listing of experimental data on lepton family violating phenomena is found at the Particle Data Group (on the linked page, with different kinds of decays each having a hyperlink to more citations to the relevant literature and materials). There is also a related review article at PDG related to that page. There are also a number of review articles at PDG that discuss the decay of mesons in general and the decay of B mesons in particular.

The most useful resources for reviewing the literature of a search of the arXiv papers for HEP-EX, Google, and Google scholar.

If you haven't found at least three or four fairly recent published articles or pre-prints from respectable authors you haven't researched the literature thoroughly enough and you need to keep looking and you need to try different key words.

A search of posts at Physics Stack Exchange (near the top left of the page, the field kind of blends into the background visually) is also a good way to review available information in a relatively up to date way from people who are on average very knowledgable.

How would you go about writing this paper?

Start With The Basics Of What Is Known Before Discussing New Or Speculative Ideas

In my experience, there is a strong temptation to start out by discussing the mystery and its solutions, and in general, what is unknown. But, this is usually not the best way to organize an essay on new BSM physics discoveries or evidence.

The Basic Outline Of An Essay Discussing Hints Of New Physics

Start With What is Known

Instead, it is usually better to develop as much of a foundation of what is known, what has been measured, what there is consensus upon, and what exactly the Standard Model predicts and allows regarding the matter being discussed.

Many writers omit this assuming that the audience knows it, but this introduction section is easy to write, it grounds all readers in the common set of shared assumptions are taken for granted and the context you are coming at the issue from, its familiarity helps you build solidarity with the reader who shares this knowledge with you making you seem more credible because you and the reader agree on the basics, and it helps a reader build up a little momentum with familiar material before getting into the more challenging new information.

Provide A Brief History Of What Led Up To The Current Experimental Results

Also, in an essay type format discussing new developments, after you lay out the basics or in connection with doing so, it is also often helpful to outline a brief history of the experiments in this area both in terms of who, when and where they too place and how they helped the field make progress and other more tangentially related discoveries. This does several things. One is that it makes it easier for a reader to evaluate references seen in your paper and elsewhere in light of how far developed this line of inquiry was when a particular paper was written. Passing mention of the key researchers in the field will also protect you from accusations that you have failed to attribute work of a researcher whose work you implicitly are relying upon. And, this format also makes it possible to highlight the "where was this point published first by whom" issue, which makes you come across as more authoritative and knowledgable.

This doesn't have to be in narrative form. A timeline or set of bullet points is also acceptable.

For example, unless you are really pressed for words, it would be helpful to discuss in your chronology in LFV in B meson decays, who discovered neutrino oscillation when and where that happened. This is because lepton flavor number is violated pervasively in neutrino oscillation. Until then, it wasn't entirely clear from the experimental data that LFV ever really took place at all, while after this discovery it was manifestly clear that LFN was not a perfectly conserved quantum number in nature.

Lay Out The Essentials Of The Methodology Used And Key Definitions Clearly

Once you get into the new material, in which you will be discussing several related experiments and measurements, it is a good time to discuss as concretely as possible, the experimental setup that the experimenters used in their more recent experiments, simplified so that only the conceptually fundamental key elements of the set up are explained. In this way, you can be clear about where the date come from and what the numbers in your tables and charts are defined to mean. 

Always be meticulous about defining your terms and the units involved, even though more advanced researchers often assume a great deal when they write, and leave a lot to the reader to figure out. If you don't have a PhD or Nobel Prize, you have to prove that you know these things, not force the reader to figure them out.

With This Foundation In Place, Communicate the Results Of The New Experiments Neutrally

As you get into the results, it is key to balance whatever hints have been discovered with a discussion of the experimental uncertainties involved and any other theoretical or circumstantial reasons for skepticism (or lack of skepticism) about the results. 

Do cut and paste the best available screen shots of charts and tables and graphs from your sources, but only if a casual reader will be able to make sense of them without reading the body text carefully first. Everyone looks at the pictures first, before reading the words.

Discuss Possible New Physics Explanations And Do So Very Carefully

Only after you have established all of these basic foundations in as much of a model independent manner as possible should you go on to discuss hypothetical explanations of the data with new physics. 

As you do this be very careful to: (1) identify the source of each proposal typically by leading authors and paper or pre-print, (2) explain the proposal as clearly and simply as possible - take time to really understand each one rather than just trying to cut and paste from another source, (3) write in a manner that clearly distinguishes between different approaches so that a reader doesn't accidentally mash some of them together incorrectly, (4) make clear in the context that they are hypotheses or conjectures rather than proven physical laws, and (5) discuss what motivates a particular BSM approach (i.e. why it makes sense to approach the issue from a particular point of view). Avoid non-standard jargon particular to only one author.

If not one approach is a clear favorite, make a chart or table showing the pros and cons of each possible BSM solution. This makes it easy for the reader to evaluate them and absorb your conclusions. 

Don't pull punches or dance around problems with any particular proposal even if you basically end up discrediting every single idea that has been proposed so far. 

Also, in that chart, always include bad data or other sources of measurement or theoretical error (i.e. that the data is just a fluke or arises as from systemic error) as one of the possibilities. The more strongly the data deviates from the SM expectation, the more you should emphasize this possibility as a likely one.

Write A Conclusion

Finally, (1) sum up the main findings in a conclusion, (2) identify what new experimental data would be most helpful in determining what the correct explanation is, and (3) finally, if you are able to do so, identify when and where new experiments that would provide helpful data are expected to be done in the future.

Write The Abstract Last

Don't write the abstract until you have written everything else and crystalized what you have learned as much as possible in your mind. And, when you do, put as much meat of your conclusion there as you can. Don't just fill the abstract with phases that talk about what your study is doing, but don't convey anything about the results to the reader.

If Space Is Limited, Focus, Don't Survey

Of course, sometimes you won't have the time or space to cover all of this in a single essay. But, if that is the case, first trim material with lots of words that doesn't really communicate much information. Then, err in the direction over covering fewer topics in greater depth, rather than surveying as many subtopics as possible.

Form and Style Issues

First, read your professor's syllabus, website and paradigms, if any, and review any examples of good work from students that he has shared. A professor's preferences always override anything that a random guy on the Internet like me says.

Use headings liberally, even if this means that your essay is broken up into many chunks. Prefer multiple short paragraphs under a heading to one long paragraph unless the entire paragraph really just has one cohesive thought. If you feel a temptation to write a very long or complex sentence, break it up into separate sentences and turn that sentence into a paragraph instead.

It is frequently good form to introduce a subsection with a heading, then to provide the one word or sentence answer, and then to further justify your answer to that question or subquestion. People naturally parse question and answer formats more easily than monologs.

If you use a phrase often, consider defining a term that sums up that phrase. But, resist the urge to create acronyms for phrases or concepts or names that are used only a few times unless the abbreviations are ubiquitous in your field and will instantly be understood by every reader, and even then define them the first time that they are used.

Paper and pixels are cheap and you can cut and paste if you need to in order to save time writing your essay. Time spent puzzling over what you were referring to with an abbreviation or acronym is expensive.

If something is hard to explain in words, supplement it with your own picture. Even a rough hand drawn picture will usually be greatly appreciated and praised. In an article like this one, a Feynman diagrams are often are particularly useful in helping a reader to understand what you are discussing.

Proofread, Review And Having Someone Else Read It If Possible

Always triple proofread your title, the abstract, your first paragraph and your last paragraph for formatting, spelling, grammar, readability, and accuracy, and have another set of eyes look at it too, because errors in these parts of the essay are particularly embarrassing.

Then, review the overall order to see that it flows smoothly, and double check every formula or number that is a result for mistakes.

Keep reviewing and revising your paper in as many drafts as necessary until you get it right. The papers of good students don't look all that great the first time. They look great because they are polished and refined and revised until no further improvements can be made. It should feel normal to have five to twenty-five drafts of a decent sized paper on a complex topic, if not more.

It is especially important to have someone who is native speaker of English read you essay (even if they are not very familiar with your field) if English is not your native language. Otherwise your essay will have awkward ways of saying things that aren't technically incorrect but aren't natural, idiomatic ways of saying something. Having a native speaker read your essay also allows you to avoid using words that have double meanings that you aren't familiar with that are often not documented in dictionaries, which can be embarrassing and distract from your scientific content.

If for some reason it is impossible to have someone else read it at least once, at a minimum, put the finished final draft aside, clear your head by doing something else (ideally sleep on it overnight) , print out the nearly final draft, and then come back to it and review it with a pen in hand, ideally away from your computer.

If you don't take this break or try to edit it entirely on a screen, your mind will often "autocorrect" errors in your head that would be obvious had you been reading your essay freshly for the first time.

There Is No Experimental Or Observational Evidence To Support A Zero Aggregate Baryon Number At T=0

A recent physics paper described for the first time (at the more than five sigma discovery threshold in a reputable peer reviewed physics journal) CP violation in charmed hardon decays that they had measured to the precise degree predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The paper is R. Aaij et al. (LHCb Collaboration), "Observation of CP Violation in Charm Decays." 122 Phys. Rev. Lett. 211803 (May 29, 2019).

In response to this paper, I noted at the Physics Forums (underlined emphasis added in this post):

Basically, this is just one more confirmation of a Standard Model prediction, made possible by improved experimental detection capacity at the LHCb. 

The introduction of the Letter notes that:

The noninvariance of fundamental interactions under the combined action of charge conjugation (C) and parity (P) transformations, so-called CP violation, is a necessary condition for the dynamical generation of the baryon asymmetry of the universe. The standard model (SM) of particle physics includes CP violation through an irreducible complex phase in the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark-mixing matrix. The realization of CP violation in weak interactions has been established in the K- and B-meson systems by several experiments, and all results are well interpreted within the CKM formalism. However, the size of CP violation in the SM appears to be too small to account for the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry, suggesting the existence of sources of CP violation beyond the SM. The observation of CP violation in the charm sector has not been achieved yet, despite decades of experimental searches. Charm hadrons provide a unique opportunity to measure CP violation with particles containing only up-type quarks. The size of CP violation in charm decays is expected to be tiny in the SM, with asymmetries typically of the order of 10^−4 − 10^−3, but due to the presence of low-energy strong-interaction effects, theoretical predictions are difficult to compute reliably.

The observed amount of CP violation of just the magnitude that the Standard Model predicts: 

(−15.4 +/- 2.9) × 10^−4 

The paper notes in its conclusion that:

The result is consistent with, although in magnitude at the upper end of, SM expectations, which lie in the range 10^−4 − 10^−3. In particular, the result challenges predictions based on first principle QCD dynamics. It complies with predictions based on flavor-SU(3) symmetry, if one assumes a dynamical enhancement of the penguin amplitude.

The researchers belief that it is likely that there will be BSM phenomena that will explain the baryon asymmetry of the universe is a case of hope triumphing over experience. Every single bit of available empirical and observational evidence suggests that the baryon asymmetry of the universe was part of its initial conditions, and these initial conditions do not violate any requirement theoretically necessary for a consistent cosmology model. But, because a Big Bang made of "pure energy" that is then deviated from due to CP violation somehow seems prettier than a non-zero baryon number of the universe to start with, researchers have presumptuously convinced themselves that they must be missing something.

Another very knowledgable participant in the discussion (mfb) responded to the language underlined above stating:

Please name such a piece of evidence, because I think that statement is blatantly wrong (unless you say “0 out of 0 is 100%”).

The post that follows was my response:

1. There has never been an observation of non-conservation of baryon number. This has been tested in multiple processes, e.g. proton decay, flavor changing neutral currents, etc. The experimental bounds on proton decay and neutron oscillation are both very strict. "No baryon number violating processes have yet been observed." Lafferty (2006) citing S. Eidelman et al. (Particle Data Group), Phys. Lett. B592 (2004). 

"Despite significant experimental effort, proton decay has never been observed. If it does decay via a positron, the proton's half-life is constrained to be at least 1.67×10^34 years." Yet, the universe is roughly 1.4*10^9 years old. This experimental result has been a leading means by which GUT theories are ruled out. 

Similarly, neutron-antineutron oscillation is not observed but if baryon asymmetry involves this process there "is an absolute upper limit on the n − n¯ oscillation time τn−n¯ of 5 × 10^10 sec. irrespective of the B − L breaking scale, which follows from the fact that we must generate enough baryon asymmetry via this mechanism (according to the linked 2013 paper). The limit on neutron-antineutron oscillation as of 2009 was τn−n¯ ≥ 10^8 sec. See also confirming the experimental result here. 

Exclusions for flavor changing neutral currents at the tree level have also not been observed although the measurements are less precise:

In the SM, flavor-changing neutral currents (FCNC) are forbidden at tree level and are strongly suppressed in loop corrections by the Glashow–Iliopoulos–Maiani (GIM) mechanism with the SM branching fraction of t → qH predicted to be O(10^−15). Several extensions of the SM incorporate significantly enhanced FCNC behavior that can be directly probed at the CERN LHC.

In top quark decays they are excluded to a branching fraction of not more than about 0.47% (per the link above). 

2. Likewise, there are no processes which have ever been observed which do not conserve lepton number (e.g. there is no observational evidence of neutrinoless double beta decay). These bounds are very strict already. 

The universe is roughly 1.4*10^9 years old, so the current limit from GERDA (from 2015) means that no more than one in 3.8*10^16 of hadrons that could have done so have actually experienced neutrinoless double beta decay since the formation of the universe. 

3. There has never been an observation of a sphaleron interaction (which would not conserve baryon number or lepton number) but the energies at which sphaleron interactions would take place (about 10 TeV and up) and the rates at which they would occur in the SM (whose parameters and equations are well tested) if they do exist are too small, particularly in light of the small CP violating phase in the CKM matrix (which has been carefully measured). See also, e.g., Koichi Funakub, "Status of the Electroweak Baryogenesis" ("[W]e find that the sphaleron process is in chemical equilibrium at T between 100 GeV and 10^12 GeV.") 

4. It is widely accepted and has been proven that with SM physics (and the linked article below acknowledges), that (1)-(3) imply that the baryon number of the initial conditions is positive and non-zero in the absence of BSM physics of particular baryon number and lepton number violating, CP violating processes that occur (only) out of equilibrium.

These are known as Sakharov’s conditions (Yoshimura is also sometimes given credit for them). This source also notes that:

Another way to view things consists in assuming that the primordial Universe developed through interactions of gravity and other fundamental forces, e.g. through the amplification of vacuum fluctuations. In such a case, gravity being blind to the difference between matter and antimatter, equal initial numbers of baryons and antibaryons are expected, and the current unbalance must be induced by subsequent interactions. . . . We only mention for completeness the possibility that the observed baryon excess is a local artefact, and that the Universe is constituted with domains with either baryon or antibaryon excess. The gamma rays arising from annihilation at the boundary of such domains would be a tell-tale sign, and the fact that they have not been observed rejects such a possibility to the limit of the observable Universe.

See also Paolo S. Coppi, "How Do We Know Antimatter Is Absent?" (2004) (reviewing the evidence against spatial anti-matter domains). 

Thus, no theory of quantum gravity alone can solve the problem unless it has CP violation which no leading theory of quantum gravity does. There is no experimental evidence of CP violation in gravity at the local level. 

In the Standard Model, neither the strong force nor the electromagnetic force have any CP violation either. 

The sole source of CP violation in the Standard Model is the weak force, a force in which the coupling constant gets smaller, not larger, a higher energies (as shown in the famous MSSM gauge coupling constant unification illustration below in the left hand panel; no anomalies in the running of any of the SM coupling constants with energy scale has been observed at the LHC so far), which is the opposite of the direction needed if it is to provide a source of CP violation sufficient to explain the baryon asymmetry of the universe ("BAU") given an assumption that aggregate baryon number at the time of the Big Bang was zero.

See also Wikipedia articles on Baryon asymmetry and Baryogenesis. 

5. The Higgs boson mass and the associated beta function for it, imply that the SM maintains unitarity up to Big Bang energies. There is nothing that would cause the SM to break down in terms of mathematically if there were no new physics at all at any scale above what is measured and the universe is at least metastable up to the mass (the Higgs boson and top quark masses haven't been measured precisely enough to determine if the universe is stable or metastable if there are no laws of physics other than the Standard Model). See also, e.g., Koichi Funakub, "Status of the Electroweak Baryogenesis" (noting that Higgs boson masses with more than 120 GeV are problematic for models creating BAU from a starting point of zero, when the global average measured value as of 2019 is 125.10 ± 0.14 GeV). 

We know empirically that the SM laws of physics remain valid at least up to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis energy scales (see below) and Large Hadron Collider ("LHC") energy such as those necessary to create a quark-gluon plasma. 

6. No one disputes that the aggregate mass-energy of the universe at the Big Bang was non-zero so it isn't as if there is a precedent that every aggregate parameter of the universe had to be zero at time equals zero (there is dispute, however, over whether gravitational energy is conserved globally in general relativity). 

7. Another quantity that is conserved in the Standard Model locally, and in the aggregate, is electromagnetic charge (for example, e → νe γ and astrophysical limits [m] >4.6 × 10^26 yr, CL = 90%), which still indistinguishable from zero in the aggregate in the universe now, and at all observable times in the history of the universe, and hence, aren't subject to wildly different laws of the universe from the SM if they were zero in the aggregate at the time of the Big Bang. 

This is particularly notable because aggregate baryon number, is equal three times the number of quarks in the universe minus the number of anti-quarks in the universe, and all quarks also electromagnetically charged. Thus, any baryon number violating or lepton number violating process must also be electromagnetic charge neutral. 

8. There are no traces in the predictions of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis that imply that there was not baryon asymmetry in the initial conditions of the universe. Indeed J.-M. Fr`ere, "Introduction to Baryo- and Leptogenesis" (2005) notes that:

based on nucleosynthesis (which occurs late in the history of the Universe and is therefore not too sensitive to the various scenarios – even if it can be affected by the number of neutrino species and the neutrino background) indicate a stricter, but compatible bound: 4 10^−10 < nB/nγ < 7 10^−10.

Any baryon number violating process must take place at T > 200 MeV (the QCD phase transition temperature), otherwise the success of nucleosynthesis will be spoiled. This temperature is about 400,000,000 times the temperature of the Sun and is believed to correspond to a time one microsecond after the Big Bang in the conventional chronology of the universe. One microsecond is about the time it takes a muon to decay. BBN itself is assumed to take place 10 to 1000 seconds after the Big Bang. This temperature is in the ballpark of the highest temperatures arising at the Large Hadron Collider (a temperature scale at which the Standard Model continues to perform as expected in myriad experimental tests). 

Put another way, even advocates of a zero baryon number initial condition (and this would be a majority of theoretical physicists and cosmologists notwithstanding the lack of empirical or observational evidence for it) pretty much agree based upon observation and empirical evidence and well established SM equations and reasonable extrapolations beyond the Standard Model, that the baryon asymmetry of the universe had to be in place around one microsecond after the Big Bang. 

The main reason we can't rule out baryon number violation prior to one microsecond after the Big Bang is that we have no way to observe it. 

9. There are no traces in the CMB that imply that there was not baryon asymmetry in the initial conditions of the universe. (This is unsurprising given that BBN happens much earlier in the cosmology timeline than the CMB traces at t=100,000 years or so). See also the implications of the CMB for inflation. 

Indeed, both of these windows into the very early universe (8) and (9) imply that if there was not baryon asymmetry at time equal zero, that baryon asymmetry had to completely arise very, very quickly. 

10. As of 2019, all experimentally measured CP violation observed in Nature (apart from neutrino oscillations data where the experimental uncertainties are too great to saying anything more than that CP violation occurs in these oscillations which may be possible to characterize with a single parameter of the PMNS matrix), is defined by a single parameter out of four parameters in all, in the CKM matrix, which as noted above, is insufficient in magnitude to explain the baryon asymmetry of the universe.

The present consistency of global CKM fits is displayed in Fig. 4. Each coloured band defines the allowed region of the apex of the unitarity triangle, according to the measurement of a specific process. Such a consistency represents a tremendous success of the CKM paradigm in the SM: all of the available measurements agree in a highly profound way. In presence of BSM physics affecting the measurements, the various contours would not cross each other into a single point. Hence the quark-flavour sector is generally very well described by the CKM mechanism, and one must look for small discrepancies.

There are also no experimentally measured deviations from CPT symmetry in non-gravitational physics. See generally, Thomas Mannel "Theory and Phenomenology of CP Violation" (2006). 

But see Belfatto, et al. (pre-print 2019) (arguing that there is a 4 sigma tension with unitarity in the measurements of the CKM elements involving the up quark, although such a tension, even if it is more than a fluke measurement wouldn't be remotely sufficient to explain BAU and primarily involves the non-CP violating parameters of the CKM matrix). 

11. Attempts to fit cosmology data to inflation theories allow for only a reasonably narrow number of e-fold (ca. 20-80 at the outside with 40-60 cited more often as consistent with the data), which implicitly imposes strict minimum boundaries on the amount of baryon asymmetry that has to emerge per e-fold since the available time in which cosmological inflation must occur and the available time in which baryon asymmetry must occur if you start from zero aggregate baryon number are basically the same. But, we don't have any indication whatsoever that there is a process that is both baryon number violating and CP violating to the necessary degree, or anything remotely close to that. 

12. We don't need it to get dark energy. Indeed, while the conventional cosmological constant starts with a near zero dark energy and then has it grow proportionately to the volume of space over time, a transition of zero baryon number to massive baryon asymmetry would imply a huge surplus of energy very close to time zero that is not needed to make the Lambda-CDM model (a.k.a. the Standard Model of Cosmology) work. 

13. We don't need it to get 21cm observations to coincide with what is observed. These measure conditions at ca. 300,000 years after the Big Bang so we wouldn't expect them to so signs of baryon symmetry violating processes. 

14. We don't need an initial condition of baryon number equal to zero to get Hubble's constant or a particular amount of dark matter. Assuming a dark matter particle paradigm, according to a pre-print by Yang (2015) subsequently published in Physical Review D, the lower bound on the mean lifetime of dark matter particles is 3.57×10^24 seconds. This largely rules out the possibility that dark matter could bear baryon number and serve as an escape valve around baryon number conservation that is hard or impossible to measure directly. 

There really are no observed phenomena in astronomy or the SM which we need an initial baryon number of zero to explain. Even if the phenomena searched for were "just beyond" current experimental limits, the rates of phenomena like proton decay, neutron oscillation, neutrinoless double beta decay and CP violation beyond the Standard Model, and sphaleron interactions were all observed, so long as the existing experimental results remained accurate, none of these could explain the BAU from a hypothesis that aggregate baryon number was zero at T=0.

A non-zero baryon number as an initial condition is the null hypothesis. It is the conclusion that we reach when we follow the available experimental and observational data, and all experimentally validate laws of physics to their logical conclusion, and assume no modifications of those laws of physics not motivated by empirical or observational evidence. 

To be clear, it isn't impossible that the laws of physics could deviated wildly from the Standard Model at energy scales well in excess of those at the LHC. Lots of respectable physics believe that someday, somehow, we will discover something like this, and almost all published articles in the field of baryogenesis consider the hypothesis that the initial aggregate baryon number of the universe to be "well motivated". Some physicists even assume, without any evidentiary or theoretical consistency support that the initial conditions of the universe must have included a zero baryon number. For example: 

the CP violation in the standard model is a small effect. In particular it is too small to create the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe, for which CP violation is an indispensable ingredient.

- Thomas Mannel "Theory and Phenomenology of CP Violation" (2006) (emphasis added). 

But, we have no meaningful positive evidence to indicate that not only does this happen, but that the deviation from the Standard Model violates baryon and lepton number, is strongly (basically maximally) CP violating, and only occurs in out of equilibrium systems. Indeed, some of the strongest experimental exclusions in all of physics involve searches for baryon number violating processes and lepton number violating processes.

Arguing for a non-zero aggregate baryon number at the Big Bang isn't glamorous or fun. It's like arguing that the Electoral College is a good idea, or that coal needs to be phased out gradually rather than immediately to prevent the economy from collapsing. But, all existing empirical and observational evidence to date supports this conclusion.

I will be curious to see what kind of response I get (if any).

The "agenda" I am pushing in this post is essentially the same one advanced by Sabine Hossenfelder in her 2018 book "Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray", which which I wholeheartedly agree (the German title, which I prefer, is "The Ugly Universe.").

The notion that the initial aggregate baryon number of the universe must have been zero at the moment of the Big Bang is very widely endorsed by physicists with many prominent ones taking it as an article of faith. But, that is all that it is, a faith based position no supported by an empirical or observational evidence, or any deductions from validated laws of physics, motivated almost entirely by a sense of mathematical beauty that is ultimately in the eye of the beholder.

Like Dr. Hossenfelder, I believe that if hypothesis generation was more closely tied to empirical and observational evidence and deductions from validated theories, and less strongly driven by mathematical beauty, that we would make more progress as a scientific community instead of spending inordinate amounts of time chasing down rabbit holes at great express producing little scientific knowledge of value.

Paradigm Reinforced and Refined With Ancient Paleo-Eskimo DNA

The details of Paleo-Eskimo migration to North America, which, it turns involves a single post-Founding population wave of pre-Columbian migration ca. 3000 BCE, and the extent to which modern people have ancestry from Paleo-Eskimos, is become more clear as the paradigm is confirmed and refined with new modern and ancient DNA evidence.

Much of the American Arctic was first settled 5,000 years ago, by groups of people known as Palaeo-Eskimos. They were subsequently joined and largely displaced around 1,000 years ago by ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yup’ik. The genetic relationship between Palaeo-Eskimos and Native American, Inuit, Yup’ik and Aleut populations remains uncertain. 

Here we present genomic data for 48 ancient individuals from Chukotka, East Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and the Canadian Arctic. We co-analyse these data with data from present-day Alaskan Iñupiat and West Siberian populations and published genomes. 

Using methods based on rare-allele and haplotype sharing, as well as established techniques, we show that Palaeo-Eskimo-related ancestry is ubiquitous among people who speak Na-Dene and Eskimo–Aleut languages. We develop a comprehensive model for the Holocene peopling events of Chukotka and North America, and show that Na-Dene-speaking peoples, people of the Aleutian Islands, and Yup’ik and Inuit across the Arctic region all share ancestry from a single Palaeo-Eskimo-related Siberian source.

From Pavel Flegontov, et al., "Palaeo-Eskimo genetic ancestry and the peopling of Chukotka and North America" Nature (June 5, 2019).

Bernard's blog (in French) discusses some of the details not available on an open access basis in the body text and reproduces some of the key figures from the paper.

Pre-Modern Libraries

Books were scarce in the pre-modern era, and so librarians needed something more potent than a library fine to punish people who lost or destroyed books. What did they resort to? Many important books included curses that would befall people who lost or destroyed the book.

There is little evidence regarding how effective this was compared to the modern day solution of library fines. One problem with this approach may have been that many people who might have stolen or destroyed the books were either entirely illiterate, or did not understand the literary languages (often Greek and Latin) in which the books were written.

More Environmental Astronomy

Even though we don't understand the Earth and its ecosphere as a being, in many respects, it acts like on, and the assumption that it does, called the Gaia hypothesis, is a reliable way to make good predictions about how the global ecosystem will respond to stress factors, including extraterrestrial impacts. This hypothesis predicts that Earth is robust in the long term and that life will find a way to stabilize things in the long run even though that are factors that could screw it up. 

Of course, on these time scales, the "long term" may be too long to be relevant to humans.

The Gaia hypothesis postulates that life regulates its environment to be favorable for its own survival. Most planets experience numerous perturbations throughout their lifetimes such as asteroid impacts, volcanism, and the evolution of a star's luminosity. For the Gaia hypothesis to be viable, life must be able to keep the conditions of its host planet habitable, even in the face of these challenges. 

ExoGaia, a model created to investigate the Gaia hypothesis, has been previously used to demonstrate that a randomly mutating biosphere is in some cases capable of maintaining planetary habitability. However, those model scenarios assumed that all non-biological planetary parameters were static, neglecting the inevitable perturbations that real planets would experience. To see how life responds to climate perturbations to its host planet, we created three climate perturbations in ExoGaia: one rapid cooling of a planet and two heating events, one rapid and one gradual. The planets on which Gaian feedbacks emerge without climate perturbations are the same planets on which life is most likely to survive each of our perturbation scenarios. Biospheres experiencing gradual changes to the environment are able to survive changes of larger magnitude than those experiencing rapid perturbations, and the magnitude of change matters more than the sign. 

These findings suggest that if the Gaia hypothesis is correct, then typical perturbations that a planet would experience may be unlikely to disrupt it.

Olivia D. N. Alcabes, Stephanie Olson, Dorian S. Abbot, "Typical Climate Perturbations Unlikely to Disrupt Gaia Hypothesis" submitted for publication to MNRAS (June 3, 2019).

Environmental Concerns In Space

It isn't too son to consider environmental issues in the solar system beyond Earth.

"How much of the Solar System should we reserve as wilderness, off-limits to human development?" 

We argue that, as a matter of policy, development should be limited to one eighth, with the remainder set aside. We argue that adopting a "1/8 principle" is far less restrictive, overall, than it might seem. One eighth of the iron in the asteroid belt is more than a million times greater than all of the Earth's estimated iron reserves and may suffice for centuries. A limit of some sort is needed because of the problems associated with exponential growth. Humans are poor at estimating the pace of such growth, so the limitations of a resource are hard to recognize before the final three doubling times which take utilization successively from 1/8 to 1/4 to 1/2, and then to the point of exhaustion. Population growth and climate change are instances of unchecked exponential growth. Each places strains upon our available resources. Each is a problem we would like to control but attempts to do so at this comparatively late stage have not been encouraging. Our limited ability to see ahead suggests that we should set ourselves a 'tripwire' that gives us at least 3 doubling times as leeway, i.e. when 1/8 of Solar System resources are close to being exploited. At a 3.5 percent growth rate for the space economy, comparable to that of the iron use from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution until now, the 1/8 point would be reached after 400 years. At that point the 20 year doubling time of a 3.5 percent growth rate means that only 60 years would remain to transition the economic system to new "steady state" conditions. The rationale for adopting the 1/8 principle now is that it may be far easier to implement in principle restrictions at an early stage, rather than later, when vested and competing interests have come into existence.

Martin Elvis, Tony Milligan "How much of the Solar System should we leave as Wilderness?" (May 24, 2019)

Northern Route Migration

Assuming that humans dispersed into Asia predominantly via a southern coastal route is firmly rooted in conventional wisdom. But, the evidence is far more equivocal on the question. 

Northern and Central Asia have been neglected in studies of early human migration, with deserts and mountains being considered uncompromising barriers. However, a new study argues that humans may have moved through these extreme settings in the past under wetter conditions. By analyzing past climate, northern Asia emerges as a potential route of human dispersal, as well as a zone of potential interaction with other hominins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans.

From here.

Feng Li, Nils Vanwezer, Nicole Boivin, Xing Gao, Florian Ott, Michael Petraglia, Patrick Roberts. "Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia." PLOS ONE, 2019; 14 (5): e0216433 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0216433

Probabilistic Vocalizations

Titi monkeys have a communications system with each other that is not categorical. Even the concept as explained in this linked blog post from John Hawks is hard to get your head around. From the paper discussed in the blog post:

Although the notion of categorical meaning is intuitively compelling, it is not necessarily the default mode of animal perception. Categorical perception has been a major theoretical pillar in animal communication research, particularly because of its intuitive link to linguistic theory. For example, Macedonia and Evans [(16), p. 179] presupposed that external events are processed in categorical terms (“…all eliciting stimuli must belong to a common category”). Although this approach has been fruitful and productive, it has also generated enigmas suggesting that the underlying theory may have to be revised. For example, in a seminal paper, Cheney and Seyfarth (17) were puzzled by the fact that animals appeared to have very few categorical semantic labels, mostly limited to predator classes and a few social events. One possibility is that graded meanings are the default way of animal communication [e.g., (18)], although this hypothesis has been much ignored and considered as less interesting than categorical perception (16). Our study suggests that explaining animal communication on categorical terms alone may be too restrictive and anthropocentric and may explain the struggle to extract meaning from some animal communication systems.

Teaching Science v. Celebrating Science

Warning: There are no spoilers in this post, but there are in the linked source material.

Many commentators on science fiction assume that science fiction should accurately explain science because it is teaching people about science. But, usually, it isn't doing that, so accuracy isn't the point. This doesn't mean that there is no relationship between science and science fiction. But, it is as much about eternal narratives and cultural alternatives, as it is about hard science, in many cases.

The a movie like Avengers: Endgame doesn’t teach science, or even advertise it. It does celebrate it though. 

That’s why, despite the silly half-correct science, I enjoyed Avengers: Endgame. It’s also why I don’t think it’s inappropriate, as some people do, to classify movies like Star Wars as science fiction. Star Wars and Avengers aren’t really about exploring the consequences of science or technology, they aren’t science fiction in that sense. But they do build off science’s role in the wider culture. They take our world and look at the advances on the horizon, robots and space travel and quantum speculations, and they let their optimism inform their storytelling.

From 4gravitons

The Particle Data Group's 2019 Update Is Now Live

The Particle Data Group combines all of the experimental data on fundamental particles and hadrons to establish global averages. 

One of the most notable of the new data points in 2019 is the Higgs boson mass which is now 125.10 ± 0.14 GeV.  Previously in 2018 it was 125.18 ± 0.16 GeV. The significance of the difference between the PDG 2019 value for the Higgs boson mass and the 124.65 GeV value that would make the Higgs boson mass squared plus the W boson mass squared plus the Z boson mass squared equal to exactly one half of the Higgs vev squared is 3.21 sigma, only slightly changed from the 3.31 sigma of the 2018 value as the uncertainty is reduced by 22% relative to  last year, in short, still strongly disfavored but not completely ruled out either.

The W and Z boson masses are unchanged. The most recent LHC data for the W boson mass (from 2018 using Run-1 data) tugs down a little to 80.370 ± 0.018 GeV relative to the current fit of 80.379 ± 0.012 GeV, but not enough to pull down the global average. A global fit of the W boson mass with the Higgs boson mass and top quark mass suggests a value of 80.362 +/- 0.002 GeV. The most recent Z boson mass data is from 2001.

2018 Quark Masses v. 2019 Quark Masses v. FLAG19 (in MeV)

top quark 173,000 ± 400 v. 172,900 ± 400
bottom quark 4,180 +40-/-30  v. 4,180 + 30/-20 v. 4,198 ± 12
charm quark 1,275 +25/-35 v. 1,270 ± 20  v. 1,282 ± 17
strange quark 95+9/-3 v. 93 +11/-5 v.  93.12 ± 0.69
down quark 4.7 + 0.5/-0.4 v. 4.67 +0.48/-0.17 v. 4.88 ± 0.2
up quark 2.2 +0.5/-0.4 v. 2.16 + 0.49/-0.26 v. 2.5 ± 0.17

All of the PDG 2019 values are consistent with the FLAG19 values.

Curiously, the PDG strange quark mass uncertainty has increased even as the uncertainty in the other four non-top quark masses has declined and the uncertainty in the top quark mass has remained the same. It is also puzzling that FLAG19 reports an uncertainty in its determination of the strange quark mass (despite having a central value that has dropped to be consistent with the FLAG19 value) that is more than eleven times smaller than PDG 2019 does, even though the other error margins for FLAG19 values are smaller than the PDG values but of the same order of magnitude.

The small downward shift in the global average of direct top quark mass measurements pulls it away from the value it would need to have for the sum of the square of the fundamental fermion masses in the Standard Model to equal half of the Higgs vev squared, which is about 174,040 MeV which is 2.85 sigma from the directly measured value.  But, this is balanced out a bit by indirect measurements of the top quark pole mass of about 173,100 ± 900 MeV. The error weighed average of the direct and indirect top quark mass measurements in PDG 2019 is 172,960 ± 366 MeV, which is 2.95 sigma from 174,040 MeV. As in the case of the Higgs boson mass, this is still strongly disfavored but not completely ruled out either. But, the likelihood that both the top quark mass measurements is too low by 2.95 sigma and the Higgs boson mass measurement is high by 3.2 sigma is very low indeed.

But, since the deviations from these values are in opposite directions and similar in magnitude, the possibility the less stringent relationship, that the sum of the square of the fundamental particle masses is equal to the square of the Higgs vev, is still perfectly consistent with the data. So, the LC & P relationship lives another year.

While FLAG19 values are based purely on state of the art lattice QCD determinations, the PDG 2019 values aren't based on methodologies that are much different.

The charged lepton masses are unchanged. I didn't determine if the neutrino mass eigenstate differences, and mixing angles were precisely the same in 2019 as they were in 2018, but the neutrino mass eigenstate differences are at a minimum, very similar to at least two significant digits.

When Herders And Foragers First Met In Africa, They Did What Comes Naturally To Humans

New ancient DNA from Africa sheds light on how the first herders in Africa found mates among Africa's foragers. 

DNA analysis shows that African herders and foragers mated with each other in two phases, says a team led by archaeologist Mary Prendergast of Saint Louis University in Madrid. After entering northeastern Africa from the Middle East around 8,000 years ago, herders swapped DNA with native foragers between roughly 6,000 and 5,000 years ago. Herders possessing some forager heritage then trekked about halfway down the continent and mated with eastern African foragers around 4,000 years ago, the scientists report online May 30 in Science. . . .

Early African herders inherited about 20 percent of their DNA from foragers, mostly via mating that occurred before 5,000 years ago, the scientists say. Herders then spread rapidly throughout eastern Africa after 3,300 years ago, mating little with foragers along the way. 

From here. The source paper is:

M.E. Prendergast et al. Ancient DNA reveals a multistep spread of the first herders into sub-Saharan Africa. Science. Published online May 30, 2019. doi:10.1126/science.aaw6275.

The abstract is as follows:

How food production first entered eastern Africa ~5000 years ago and the extent to which people moved with livestock is unclear. We present genome-wide data from 41 individuals associated with Later Stone Age, Pastoral Neolithic (PN), and Iron Age contexts in what are now Kenya and Tanzania to examine the genetic impacts of the spreads of herding and farming. Our results support a multi-phase model in which admixture between northeastern African-related peoples and eastern African foragers formed multiple pastoralist groups, including a genetically homogeneous PN cluster. Additional admixture with northeastern and western African-related groups occurred by the Iron Age. These findings support several movements of food producers, while rejecting models of minimal admixture with foragers and of genetic differentiation between makers of distinct PN artifacts.

Mathematics As A Mature Discipline

How mature is mathematics as a discipline?

Probably less than 2% of adults will ever master any kind of math more modern than the advances made by Leohard Euler, who died in 1783, and fewer people still can understand all the contributions he made to mathematics and other scientific disciplines. His intellectual legacy began to accumulate around 1726.

Calculus, now studied by many students late in high school or in their freshman year in college, was invented by Newton and Leibniz in the late 1600s.

Alexander the Great, who died around 323 BCE, studied some of the same mathematical subjects that are found in high school classes called trigonometry or pre-calculus (e.g. conic sections).

Most Americans spend a year in school studying geometry concepts that were in place and improved upon by Pythagoras who died around 495 BCE.

They Are Building A Neutrino Telescope At The Bottom Of The Mediterranean Sea

This neutrino telescope isn't just at the bottom of the sea. It's looking down, not up.

Deep under the Mediterranean Sea, hundreds of watchful eyes hang suspended on cables, waiting for a rare and valuable flash. Their quarry are ghostly neutrino particles, capable of tunneling through light-years of space and a planet’s worth of rock without ever coming into contact with matter. 

But, here, under the ocean, they just might hit a detector from the Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope, or KM3NeT. While the international collaboration is still in the early stages of construction, it hopes to soon begin tracking some of the most elusive particles in the universe. 

Neutrinos are nearly massless particles produced in the sun and in energetic events like supernovas, colliding stars, and gamma-ray bursts. Because the particles barely interact with the rest of the universe, they are notoriously difficult to study, though trillions pass through your body every second. 

Researchers have tended to bury neutrino detectors in vats of supercooled liquids or miles underground, hoping that neutrinos will be the only particles that make it through.

This time, researchers are hiding the detectors at the bottom of the sea, on the other side of the planet from the skies they hope to study, to block everything but neutrinos from hitting their detectors.

From here (emphasis added).

For what it is worth, at this moment in time, I think that innovative big telescopes (like this one and the new gravitational wave telescopes) are a better investment to answer the solvable questions about the fundamental laws of physics that we haven't solved yet than a new particle accelerator that is seven to twelve times as big as the biggest one we've built yet.

Someday, the time may be ripe to build a new accelerator. But, we can almost guarantee that we won't find anything really revolutionary by increasing the energy scale of the collisions by one order of magnitude. We'd have been getting hints via indirect indications, albeit inconclusive, of what is going on at higher energies already if that was going to happen. But, we haven't been seeing that.

In contrast, we know for a fact that it takes some sort of new physics to explain dark matter and dark energy phenomena, and we have very good reason to think that new data can tell us more about neutrinos and the history of the universe (i.e. cosmology). And, we are getting so much new data, simultaneously, from so many independent sources of new observations, that we actually are making progress on those questions, even though it may not alway seem like that on a day to day basis.

What do scientists mean when they say that something exists?

Sabine Hossenfelder does her usual spot on job of navigating through the weeds of what it means in science to say that something exists, using the Higgs boson, quarks, and gravitational waves as examples. An excerpt:

When we say that these experiments measured “gravitational waves emitted in a black hole merger”, we really mean that specific equations led to correct predictions.

It is a similar story for the Higgs-boson and for quarks. The Higgs-boson and quarks are names that we have given to mathematical structures. In this case the structures are part of what is called the standard model of particle physics. We use this mathematics to make predictions. The predictions agree with measurements. That is what we mean when we say “quarks exist”: We mean that the predictions obtained with the hypothesis agrees with observations. 

She goes on to discuss the philosophical concept of "realism" and to, appropriately, dismiss it as basically irrelevant. 

Modern Humans Were Cooking Starchy Plants 120,000 Years Ago

Flour has been in use since the Upper Paleolithic era in Europe (ca. 40,000 years ago) and in pre-Columbian, pre-Neolithic North American, but this example is much older.

"Our results showed that these small ashy hearths were used for cooking food and starchy roots and tubers were clearly part of their diet, from the earliest levels at around 120,000 years ago through to 65,000 years ago," says Larbey. "Despite changes in hunting strategies and stone tool technologies, they were still cooking roots and tubers." 

. . .

By combining cooked roots and tubers as a staple with protein and fats from shellfish, fish, small and large fauna, these communities were able to optimally adapt to their environment, indicating great ecological intelligence as early as 120,000 years ago. 

"Starch diet isn't something that happens when we started farming, but rather, is as old as humans themselves," says Larbey. Farming in Africa only started in the last 10,000 years of human existence.

From here.

The paper is:

Cynthia Larbey, et al., "Cooked starchy food in hearths ca. 120 kya and 65 kya (MIS 5e and MIS 4) from Klasies River Cave, South Africa." 131 Journal of Human Evolution 210 (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2019.03.015

Proposed Solution To Voynich Code Published

Language Log has a nice analysis of the most recent published claim to have solved the great linguistic mystery of the Voynich Code.

"The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained" In Romance Studies. Published online: 29 Apr 2019 

[VHM: MS 408 is the call number under which the Voynich manuscript is catalogued in Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, to which it was donated by Hans P. Kraus in 1969.] 

Manuscript MS408 (Voynich) is unusual in a number of respects: 1. It uses an extinct language. 2. Its alphabet uses a number of unfamiliar symbols alongside more familiar symbols. 3. It includes no dedicated punctuation marks. 4. Some of the letters have symbol variants to indicate punctuation. 5. Some of the symbol variants indicate phonetic accents. 6. All of the letters are in lower case. 7. There are no double consonants. 8. It includes diphthong, triphthongs, quadriphthongs and even quintiphthongs for the abbreviation of phonetic components. 9. It includes some words and abbreviations in Latin. As a result, identifying the language and solving the writing system required some ingenuity and lateral thinking, but both were duly revealed. The writing system is rather more singular and less intuitive than modern systems, which may explain why it failed to become culturally ubiquitous and ultimately became obsolete. On the other hand, a significant vestige of the language has survived into the modern era, because its lexicon has been sequestered into the many modern languages of Mediterranean Europe. Here, the language and writing system are explained, so that other scholars can explore the manuscript for its linguistic and informative content.

Established experts strongly disagree that this proposed solution is accurate:

"Cheshire reCAsT", J. K. Petersen, The Voynich Portal (5/7/19) 

"Cheshire Reprised", J. K. Petersen, The Voynich Portal (5/16/19) 

"No, someone hasn’t cracked the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript. Medieval scholar: "Sorry, folks, 'proto-Romance language' is not a thing."" Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica (5/15/19)

Etruscans in Poland?

"The Pomeranian culture, was an Iron Age culture with origins in parts of the area south of the Baltic Sea, from the 7th c. to the 3rd c. BC, which eventually covered most of today's Poland" that has a lot of material culture in common with the Etruscans of Northern Italy (one of the last attested linguistically non-Indo-European people in Europe) and other Mediterranean people of uncertain linguistic affiliation, according to a fairly convincing post at the Old European Culture blog. The most plausible route of the connection is via the Iron Age "Amber Road". But, the artifacts shared by these cultures don't appear in places in between them.