Friday, November 15, 2019

Severe Sixty Year Drought Felled Neo-Assyrian Empire

A new paper, once again, explains the rise and fall of an empire by looking at shifts in climate that coincide with them. In this case, a severe sixty year drought destroyed the Neo-Assyrian Empire. As the abstract explains:
Northern Iraq was the political and economic center of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (c. 912 to 609 BCE)—the largest and most powerful empire of its time. After more than two centuries of regional dominance, the Neo-Assyrian state plummeted from its zenith (c. 670 BCE) to complete political collapse (c. 615 to 609 BCE). Earlier explanations for the Assyrian collapse focused on the roles of internal politico-economic conflicts, territorial overextension, and military defeat. Here, we present a high-resolution and precisely dated speleothem record of climate change from the Kuna Ba cave in northern Iraq, which suggests that the empire’s rise occurred during a two-centuries-long interval of anomalously wet climate in the context of the past 4000 years, while megadroughts during the early-mid seventh century BCE, as severe as recent droughts in the region but lasting for decades, triggered a decline in Assyria’s agrarian productivity and thus contributed to its eventual political and economic collapse.



Time counterintuitively flows from right to left in this figure. 
It is unusually wet during green years and arid in red ones.


Ashish Sinha, et al. "Role of climate in the rise and fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire." 5(11) Science Advances (November 13, 2019): eaax6656 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aax6656 (open access). Supplemental materials with historic and geographic context are here.

The body text elaborates on the story summed up in the figure above:
The z score transformed values of the detrended record delineating the drier intervals are similar to the values observed during the ~1980–2007 period of our record, the latter coeval with the period of the largest reduction in cool-season precipitation over the northern Iraq and Syria during the past century. The interval between ~850 and 740 BCE emerged as one of the wettest periods of the past 4000 years . . .  representing ~15 to 30% increase in the cool-season precipitation amount (relative to 1980–2007 CE). . . . 
This peak wet period, termed here the Assyrian megapluvial, was embedded within nearly two centuries (~925–725 BCE) of pluvial conditions and is synchronous with the prominent phases of the Assyrian imperial expansion (c. 920–730 BCE) within the margin of dating errors of both proxy (~25 years, 1σ) and historical records (~1 year). The age errors associated with the events surrounding the rise and fall of the Assyrian Empire are known with annual and, for many events, at monthly chronological precision. 
The [years] between ~800 BCE and ~700 BCE mark the transition from peak pluvial to peak dry conditions.  . . . The interval between ~675–550 BCE . . . emerged as a ~125-year period of peak aridity, termed here the Assyrian megadrought, which is synchronous, within the margins of dating error, with the period of the Assyrian imperial collapse, c. 660–600 BCE. The severity of the Assyrian megadrought is comparable in magnitude to the post-1980 CE drought inferred from our speleothem record—an observation that provides critical context for both historical and modern droughts.
The paper also hints that climate may also be driving contemporary politics in the region, noting early on that:
The core of the Assyrian Empire encompassed a triangular region in northern Iraq defined by the capital cities of Assur in the south (modern Qal’at Sherqat), the seventh century BCE Assyrian capital of Nineveh (modern Mosul) in the north, and Arbela (modern Erbil) in the east.

Mediterranean cyclonic systems in this region provide the bulk of annual precipitation (~90 to 95%) during the cool season (November to April), ranging from 600 to 1000 mm in the north and west to ~200 to 300 mm or less in the south and east.

Today, much of the region that constituted Assyria’s heartland and its hinterland is situated within the high-yield rain-fed cereal agriculture zone lying above the 200- to 300-mm isohyets, referred as a “zone of uncertainty” because interannual variability is typically 40 to 60% and rain-fed cereal cultivation is risky and unsustainable. During years of anomalously high and low rainfall, this agriculturally marginal zone shifts southward and northward by several hundred kilometers, rendering nearly all ancient Assyria’s heartland both favorable for high-yield cereal cultivation and vulnerable to crop failures.

The latter was demonstrated during the severe drought episodes of 1999–2001 and 2007–2008 when cereal crop failures and widespread livestock death were pervasive across northern Syria and Iraq. These droughts, which were the most severe in the past 50 years, were marked by up to 60% reduction in cool-season rainfall over northern Iraq that exacerbated regional socioeconomic conditions already suffering from decades of political instability and unsustainable socioeconomic policies.

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Ancient Roman DNA

At the forest level, the only slightly surprising quirk in a new (paywalled) survey of ancient Roman DNA in the journal Science released last Friday is that its second demographic transition is unclear and on the late side, but still in the Bronze Age. There are no samples from 1700 BCE to 700 BCE, so there simply isn't the data to resolve this transition in detail with direct evidence (although deeper analysis of, for example, linkage disequilibrium in early Iron Age steppe ancestry components might help resolve this question in later studies even without new data). This is something that may be due as much as anything to Rome being a backwater until the early Iron Age when it was really founded as the city that it is today. 





The Near Eastern component largely drops out of the the Roman gene pool after the Imperial Roman period, although this could be simply due to the peculiarities of which samples with particular biases data to which eras.


The new paper and its abstract are as follows (emphasis added):
Ancient Rome was the capital of an empire of ~70 million inhabitants, but little is known about the genetics of ancient Romans. Here we present 127 genomes from 29 archaeological sites in and around Rome, spanning the past 12,000 years. We observe two major prehistoric ancestry transitions: one with the introduction of farming and another prior to the Iron Age. By the founding of Rome, the genetic composition of the region approximated that of modern Mediterranean populations. During the Imperial period, Rome’s population received net immigration from the Near East, followed by an increase in genetic contributions from Europe. These ancestry shifts mirrored the geopolitical affiliations of Rome and were accompanied by marked inter-individual diversity, reflecting gene flow from across the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Africa.
Margaret L. Antonio, et al. "Ancient Rome: A genetic crossroads of Europe and the Mediterranean" 366 (6466) Science 708 (November 8, 2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aay6826

Bernard's Blog has a post that gets past some of the paywall limitations.

Razib notes that Rome was something of a population sink which absorbed cosmopolitan influences but didn't necessarily spread them. He has more analysis in an earlier post that observes that "Modern Romans descend from Italian peasants, who were less impacted by the predations of the Goths and Byzantines, and had higher fertility than urban dwellers even in peaceful times" and also notes that Christianity may have helpfully reduced inbreeding and clan based social organization in Europe.

Eurogenes opens up two threads for discussions of the fine details. 

* His first post asks "What's the difference between ancient Romans and present-day Italians?" A question the new paper answers with "not much." 

* His second post is entitled: "Open analysis and discussion thread: Etruscans, Latins, Romans and others", the biggest upshot of which is that Etruscan ancient DNA differs surprisingly subtly from that of nearly contemporaneous Indo-European language speakers. This is arguably the most notably inference that can be drawn from the data including this new paper. Some notable comments from that thread (my emphasis in bold):





Romulus said...
It's really weird that the Iron Age Italians prefer Yamnaya over all these Beaker or CWC groups as a 2 way fit with Copper Age Italians.

It seems to imply that the Steppe group which brought M269 to Italy branched off before the group that led to the Lech Valley Beakers. Giving Italians a less diluted form of Steppe.

There were Copper Age Italian like groups (Hungarian Beaker) mixing with Yamnaya in the Carpathian Basin.

But what it probably is a reflection of is a migration of this Bronze Age Croatian like group represented by R437 bringing additional Steppe from the Balkans after the initial Beaker groups. The J2b Croatian had a lot of Steppe and R437 shows that on the PCA.
ǵenh said...
@ Davidski

That's right, David.

The Proto-Villanovan culture is a Late Bronze culture present throughout Italy from the Alps to eastern Sicily, which is considered Proto-Italic but not exclusively Italic. In the sense that almost all subsequent cultures of the Iron Age of Italy derive from Proto-Villanovan culture, both Iron Age Italic (Latin, Osco-Umbrians) and non-Italic cultures (Veneti, Etruscans). Especially in the past, even the Culture of Golasecca (which is typical of north-west Italy from which derive the Celts who speak a lepontic language) was believed to be derived from the Proto-Villanovan culture.

While the Villanovan culture is an Iron Age culture that is the first phase of the Etruscans, the beginning of the Etruscan civilization, according to what is now the most accepted Etruscan chronology by scholars.

The misunderstanding between the two names was born because the Villanovan culture associated to the Etruscans was the first to be discovered by archaeologists around the middle of the 1800s. When in the 1930s archeologists also discovered settlements of Protovillanovan culture, at first they thought that it was only an earlier phase of Villanovan culture. Only later they understood that the Protovillanovan culture was instead the previous phase of many other cultures present in Italy, including the Italic ones, but the name was never changed, and this has contributed to creating confusion.
Samuel Andrews said...
Romulus,
"It seems to imply that the Steppe group which brought M269 to Italy branched off before the group that led to the Lech Valley Beakers. Giving Italians a less diluted form of Steppe."

What I'm seeing, is Latins perfer Bell Beaker from Germany & Czech.

"There were Copper Age Italian like groups (Hungarian Beaker) mixing with Yamnaya in the Carpathian Basin."

R1b P312+ isn't from Yamnaya. It's from Corded Ware. A R1b L51+ has been found in Corded Ware. It's unlikely there were groups with mostly Yamnaya/Kurgan ancestry in Central Europe in the Bronze age. The groups who went to Italy were already probably under 50% Yamnaya.
Gaska said...
*ETRUSCANS-

1-They are practically identical to Latins (24-28% Yamnaya)
2-Descend from BBs (45-50%)
3-We have cases of Bbs in Parma with Iberian signal in its Autosomal DNA
4-Italian Chalcolithic has a strong Iberian signal-
5-Etruscans are a mixture of local Eneolithic + Balkans + BBS-
6-Very similar to the Iron Age Iberians and Northern Italians
7-They have more Balkan mix than Latins
8-Obviously they were NOT Africans or Anatolians, nor Levantines-
9-Its mitochondrial markers are typically western (WHG-EEF and Iberian)
10-Heirs of the Villanovan culture that comes from UrnField Culture
11-We only have a male marker and I think it comes from Illyria
12-They spoke a non-Indo-European language-

Also, keep in mind that Sam is an expert in declaring the end of the story without any reason to do so.

It is essential to know more information about the Bronze Age in Italy (we do not have a single sample yet) and more data on the uniparental markers of the Etruscans, because they are also direct descendants of the BBs and therefore the doubts about the language spoken by the BB culture still exist
Archi said...
[Quoting Gaska above] . . .

1. R475 is almost identical, yeah. When there are only three of them. R850 is also a sample.
2. thus it is possible to name any other percent and anybody else.
5. You can name any other combination. If you forget about R475.
6. And we can say that Very unsimilar to the Iron Age Iberians and Northern Italians
7. Can we say that they have not Balkan mix than Latins
8. We will forgot further, the main thing is not to turn to R475 (and R850)
9. They have typical mito for Europe and Anatolia
10. Villanova are not their culture.
11 This male marker is much closer to Nuragic Sardinia and without any steppe components, it was not there before the nuragas.
12. Nobody knows the language of which group they spoke, but definitely not Basque. He had the strongest connections with Lydia.
Andrzejewski said...
Can we claim then that Etruscans are basically almost identical to Italics, save for an extra layer of admixture stemming from migrants from the Balkan who were rich in EEF and must’ve spoken a farmer language? Is it from areas close to Lemnian? If so, would Etruscan be considered a Lengyel sourced language?

I would interject that Etruscan was indeed not Indo-European and also not Basque, although its associations with other attested non-Indo-European language of Europe like Lemnian is cryptic because non-Indo-European languages of the Mediterranean other than Etruscan, Basque and the Afro-Asiatic languages of the region (e.g. Phoenician, Maltese and Hebrew) are very poorly attested. Etruscan was still in living language in classical Rome at a stage when history and linguistics had finally started to cross over from myth and legend to serious scholarly pursuits with recognized experts. Classical Roman scholars were wrong about many things, and their work in this area can't easily be tested because Etruscan hasn't been fully deciphered, but they wouldn't have missed anything too obvious to someone who had access to the information available in the capital of the Roman Empire.




FrankN said...
Do I get this correctly? Some models, such as the original ones from the paper, and also those run by Matt, speak in favour of an Anatolian_BA (CHG-enhanced) element in the genesis of Etruscans and IA_Italics, while others seem to favour a BB descent instead. Could someone try to clarify this, possibly by treating each sample separately? E.g., "Italic" R1021, 7th cBC, is according to the SuppMats coming from a site half-way between Rome and Naples characterised by "Italic archaeological findings and Pelasgic walls, characteristic of the people of the Bronze Age Aegean" - IOW: We may be dealing with an outpost of Magna Graecia rather than a typical "Italic" assemblage.

Linguists have long been puzzled by Anatolian - ItaloCeltic isoglosses such as the passive marked by infixed -tu-. A parsimonious explanation could be that Italo-Celtic represents an originally Anatolian language (probably Luvic rather than Hittite-like) which entered during the MBA and was later overformed by some kind of Illyro-Germanic that came in with the Urnfield expansion.
As to Etruscan-HurroUrartean connections: A genetic relation isn't yet universally accepted, but seems to enjoy increasing support. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarodian_languages:

"The term "Alarodian languages" was revived by I.M. Diakonoff for the proposed language family that unites the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian languages.(..)

The inclusion of Etruscan and the related Tyrsenian languages has also been proposed, first by Orel and Starostin in 1990, on the basis of sound correspondences.[13] Facchetti has argued that there is a "curious" set of isoglosses between Etruscan and Hurrian[14], while Pliev proposed instead that Etruscan had a Nakh substrate.[15] In 2006, Robertson developed the hypothesis for including Tyrsenian further by presenting reconstructions of common ancestral forms of the numerals, and proposed cases of apparent sound correspondences between Etruscan and Nakh, with discussion also of Hurro-Urartian, Lemnian and the various Dagestanian branches.[16]
".

Apparently, Gamkrelidze/Ivanov 1990 have stressed particular closeness between NE Caucasian and Etruscan. A Fournet, while sceptical about a HU-NEC genetic relation, speaks out in favour of Tyrrhenian-HU relatedness (see my comments to the previous post). Kozyrski e.a. 2015 (http://www.aiscience.org/journal/j3l) came up with a number of fresh Etruscan-NEC (&HU) isoglosses.

Last but not least, V.V. Ivanow "Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European" glosses over various HU/NEC - Etruscan connections, e.g. as concerns the plural on -(a)r shared by HU, NEC and Etruscan, Etruscan eis-er/ais-e/ar vs. Hurr. e-en-za-a-ri "gods", HU *pur(r)a "slave, servant" also present in Etruscan (plus Latin puer "boy", w/o satisfying IE etymology), and the etymological relation between the Etruscan toponym Mantua and the Urartian Mantupa.

https://pies.ucla.edu/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf

Last but not least, a couple of Austrian archeologists have related the Taurus (S. Anatolia) to the Tauern (E. Alps) massives (c.f. the Taurisci in IA N. Italy). Note in this context Etruscan tul, Chechen t'o "stone" [albeit the t<->r sound shift would require explaination].
FrankN said...
Correction to my previous post: I mistook the Taurisci, who actually settled around the Tauern massive in Austria, for the NE Italian Taurini, who lent there name to the city of Turin.
FrankN said...
Ric: "So what you are basically saying is that Italic and Celtic originated in Anatolia to try and make the Hurro-Urartian thing work...?"

Not quite. What I am saying that linguists have for long known about a specific closeness between Anatolian and Italo-Celtic, w.o. so far being able to explain the reason for this closeness. An EBA migration out of Anatolia into Italy would provide a sensible explanation.

Otherwise, ItaloCeltic also has a lot in common with Germanic (albeit some phylogenies, e.g. the one proposed by D. Ringe, group Germanic with Albanian, others have Germanic clustering with Balto-Slavic). In this sense, the terminology "originated in [Anatolia]" is probably misplaced. We should rather think in terms of admixture and overforming, as also happened with English (Latin overforming Insular Celtic, to be overformed by first W., than N. Germanic, and ultimately heavily absorbing Franco-Norman, which in itself was a Gaulish-Latin-Germanic hybrid).

IA Italy by ca. 500-400 BC, displayed a huge linguistic diversity, including
- several fairly differentiated Italic languages falling into three different families (Osco-Umbrian, Latin-Faliscan, Venetic [phonetically Italic, grammatically probably a distinct language/family in its own right]);

- Other IA, especially Celtic (Lepontic, possibly further Celtic language), Ancient Greek in S.Italy, plus possibly also Illyrian languages along the Adriatic coast;
- Non-IE languages such as Etruscan, Rhaetic, Semitic (Punic), possibly Ligurian, Paleosardinian, and maybe a couple more.

The Punic and Old Greek cases seem relatively clear, but otherwise this linguistic diversity is so far poorly understood. Even if we just focus on non-Greek IE languages: Their diversity is unlikely to have evolved from just a single introgression, e.g. Urnfield-related ca. 1.200 BC. One possibility would be that IE was already spoken in Italy since a long time, maybe EEF, or BB. Both scenarios are IMO unlikely: There is substantial linguistic evidence against EEF speaking IE, and the BB impact on Italy (aside from the questions on BB language thrown up in Iberia) was extremely limited, both archeologically and genetically.

As such, I think the explaination for Italy's linguistic diversity during the middle IA lies in a series of IE introgressions from the MBA onwards, which brought several already fairly differentiated IE languages there (interactction with non-IE substrate, and Etruscan/ Semitic superstrate, provided for further differentiation). One obvious source is Urnfied via the E. Alps, a second one would be the (Pre-Proto-)Illyrian-speaking Balkans, but in addition to those two, Anatolia also looks linguistically promising.
Samuel Andrews said...
I looked at the Imperial Roman samples. 48 samples are in G25 PCA These are my opinons......

41 of 48 are over 50% Middle Eastern. On average, they are 66% Middle Eastern.

Where in the Middle East did they come from????
Asia Minor=22
Syria=9
Levant=4
Mesopotamia=5
Samuel Andrews said...
These was real Middle Eastern admixture in Roman-era Italy not the kind the ancient Greeks had. Ancient Greeks had Western Anatolia, EEF-rich, IranN-low, Levant-low kind of Mid East admixture.

This new Mid East admix in Roman era Italy came from the "interior" Middle East not the Aegean/Western Anatolia.

Meaning, they weren't all majority AnatoliaBA-like. They had complex ancestry which had significant doses from all over the ancient Middle East: Anatolia, Levant, Caucasus, Iran.

Overall, Cyrpiots are the best modern references. Because Cypriots are mostly ANatolia-BA but also have significant recent Levant-BA and recent Mesoptamia like ancestry.
FrankN said...
I would for the time being suggest some caution as concerns the "Etruscan" samples. The locations in question may rather have been assigned to Etruscans on political than on linguistic grounds. After all, Rome was also an "Etruscan" city until they kicked out "Etruscan" Tarquinius Superbus in 509 BC. Let's wait for aDNA from Tuscany, where there (hopefully) is some more certainty that not only the political elite, but also commoners actually spoke Etrurian.

Otherwise, that HRV-IA I1331 sample has been found not too far away from the area of the IA Liburnians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liburnian_language:
"Following studies of the onomastics of the Roman province of Dalmatia, Géza Alföldy has suggested that the Liburni and Histri belonged to the Venetic language area.[4][5] In particular, some Liburnian anthroponyms show strong Venetic affinities, a few similar names and common roots, such as Vols-, Volt-, and Host- (< PIE *ghos-ti-, "stranger, guest, host"). Liburnian and Venetic names sometimes also share suffixes in common, such as -icus and -ocus.
(..)
Other toponymical and onomastic similarities have been found between Liburnia and other regions of both Illyria and Asia Minor, especially Lycia, Lydia, Caria, Pisidia, Isauria, Pamphylia, Lycaonia and Cilicia, as well as similarities in elements of social organization, such as matriarchy/ginecocracy (gynaikokratia) and the numerical organization of territory. These are also features of the wider Adriatic region, especially Etruria, Messapia and southern Italy.[10] (..)
The old toponym Liburnum in Liguria may also link the Liburnian name to the Etruscans,[12][13] as well as the proposed Tyrsenian language family.
 "

Right- that's the linguists' story, that to some extent matches, and to some extent not, what aDNA now starts to reveal. To grab the full story, we'll need lots of MLBA aDNA.

Rob: "Etruria was able to rise amidst all this because of it contacts with the Nuraghi, which were one of the few powers which were able to maintain their trans-Mediterranean contacts amidst the said collapses, via Cyprus. "
I don't think that is the full story. Etruria's rise also has to do with control of Italy's richest iron ore deposits, especially those on Elba (and in addition also sophisticated iron smithing and Welding craftsmanship). See for details
https://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/itineraries/itinerary/MetallurgyTuscany.html

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

More Evidence Supports The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

More studies are showing support for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, which increasingly looks like it had an impact on a global basis. In my view, this is the most plausible explanation. 
The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, controversial from the time it was presented in 2007, proposes that an asteroid or comet hit the Earth about 12,800 years ago causing a period of extreme cooling that contributed to extinctions of more than 35 species of megafauna including giant sloths, sabre-tooth cats, mastodons and mammoths. It also coincides with a serious decline in early human populations such as the Clovis culture and is believed to have caused massive wildfires that could have blocked sunlight, causing an "impact winter" near the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. . . .
While the brief return to ice-age conditions during the Younger Dryas period has been well-documented, the reasons for it and the decline of human populations and animals have remained unclear. The impact hypothesis was proposed as a possible trigger for these abrupt climate changes that lasted about 1,400 years.
There is also evidence supporting Greenland as a primary impact location:
[A] team of researchers found unusually high concentrations of platinum and iridium in outwash sediments from a recently discovered crater in Greenland that could have been the impact point. Although the crater hasn't been precisely dated yet, Moore says the possibility is good that it could be the "smoking gun" that scientists have been looking for to confirm a cosmic event. Additionally, data from South America and elsewhere suggests the event may have actually included multiple impacts and airbursts over the entire globe.
The journal reference for the article quoted above is:

Christopher R. Moore, et al., "Sediment Cores from White Pond, South Carolina, contain a Platinum Anomaly, Pyrogenic Carbon Peak, and Coprophilous Spore Decline at 12.8 ka." 9(1) Scientific Reports (2019).. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-51552-8

But, multiple other similar anomalies in other locations are also noted:
Moore also was lead author on a previous paper documenting sites in North America where platinum spikes have been found and a co-author on several other papers that document elevated levels of platinum in archaeological sites, including Pilauco, Chile -- the first discovery of evidence in the Southern Hemisphere. 
"First, we thought it was a North American event, and then there was evidence in Europe and elsewhere that it was a Northern Hemisphere event. And now with the research in Chile and South Africa, it looks like it was probably a global event," he says.
Several prior posts at this blog have examined this hypothesis in more depth:



* Hiding In Plain Sight (May 3, 2017).


Sunday, October 27, 2019

Denmark Was Pretty Warm In 1370 BCE

One of the most famous recovered ancient individuals in Denmark is "Egtved Girl", a 16-18 year old girl, buried in 1370 BCE (in the early Nordic Bronze Age) in an oak coffin which was well preserved because it was in an acidic bog. She was about 5'3" tall. The cause of her death is unknown.

According to a 2019 study cited in Wikipedia (Erik Thomsen and Rasmus Andreasen, "Agricultural lime disturbs natural strontium isotope variations: Implications for provenance and migration studies" 5(3) Science Advances (13 March 2019)):
The Egtved Girl lived about half the year in one area—likely the river valley, in Egtved, and the other half of the year in another place—likely the local plateau, perhaps in the practice of transhumance farming and seasonal pastoral movement within a small area.
 What was life like back then?
Settlement in the Scandinavian Bronze Age period consisted mainly of single farmsteads, with no towns or substantial villages known - farmsteads usually consisted of a longhouse plus additional four-post built structures (helms) - longhouses were initially two aisled . . . . Evidence of multiple longhouses at a single site have been found, but they are thought to date to different periods, rather than being of the same date. Settlements were geographically located on higher ground, and tended to be concentrated near the sea. Also associated with settlements were burial mounds and cemeteries, with interments including oak coffins and urn burials; other settlement associations include rock carvings, or bronze hoards in wetland sites. 
Both agriculture (including wheat, millet, and barley) and husbandry (keeping of domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep and pigs) were practiced, and fishing and shellfish were also sources of food, as well as deer, elk, and other wild animal hunting. There is evidence that oxen were used as draught animals, domesticated dogs were common, horses were rarer and probably status symbols. 
Even though Scandinavians joined the European Bronze Age cultures fairly late through trade, Scandinavian sites present a rich and well-preserved legacy of bronze and gold objects. These valuable metals were all imported, primarily from Central Europe, but they were often crafted locally and the craftsmanship and metallurgy of the Nordic Bronze Age was of a high standard. The archaeological legacy also comprise locally of crafted wool and wooden objects and there are many tumuli and rock carving sites from this period, but no written language existed in the Nordic countries during the Bronze Age. The rock carvings have been dated through comparison with depicted artifacts, for example bronze axes and swords. There are also numerous Nordic Stone Age rock carvings, those of northern Scandinavia mostly portray elk.

Thousands of rock carvings from this period depict ships, and the large stone burial monuments, known as stone ships, suggest that ships and seafaring played an important role in the culture at large. The depicted ships, most likely represents sewn plank built canoes used for warfare, fishing and trade. These ship types may have their origin as far back as the neolithic period and they continue into the Pre-Roman Iron Age, as exemplified by the Hjortspring boat. 3,600-year old bronze axes and other tools made from Cypriot copper have been found in the region. . . .

The Nordic Bronze Age was initially characterized by a warm climate that began with a climate change around 2700 BC. The climate was comparable to that of present-day central Germany and northern France and permitted a relatively dense population and good opportunities for farming; for example, grapes were grown in Scandinavia at this time. A minor change in climate occurred between 850 BC and 760 BC, introducing a wetter, colder climate and a more radical climate change began around 650 BC. 
There is no coherent knowledge about the Nordic Bronze Age religion; its pantheon, world view and how it was practised. . . . Many finds indicate a strong sun-worshipping cult in the Nordic Bronze Age and various animals have been associated with the sun's movement across the sky, including horses, birds, snakes and marine creatures (see also Sól). A female or mother goddess is also believed to have been widely worshipped (see Nerthus). Hieros gamos rites [a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities] may have been common and there have been several finds of fertility symbols. A pair of twin gods are believed to have been worshipped, and is reflected in a duality in all things sacred: where sacrificial artifacts have been buried they are often found in pairs. Sacrifices (animals, weapons, jewelery and humans) often had a strong connection to bodies of water. Boglands, ponds, streams or lakes were often used as ceremonial and holy places for sacrifices and many artifacts have been found in such locations. Ritual instruments such as bronze lurs have been uncovered, especially in the region of Denmark and western Sweden. Lur horns are also depicted in several rock carvings and are believed to have been used in ceremonies. Many rock carvings are uncanny in resemblance to those found in the Corded Ware Culture. 

A Bronze Age "Lur" similar in concept to a modern sousaphone. 
Remnants of the Bronze Age religion and mythology are believed to exist in Germanic mythology and Norse mythology; e.g., Skinfaxi and Hrímfaxi and Nerthus, and it is believed to itself be descended from an older Indo-European proto-religion.
We know this about her burial, together with what might have been a little sibling, or her first child born when she was just old enough to give birth, or a human sacrifice (Danish museum proclamations that an 18 year old woman couldn't possibly have had a 5 year old child are amusing):
Of the girl herself only hair, brain, teeth, nails and a little skin remain. Her teeth reveal that she was 16-18 years old when she died. On her body she wore a short tunic and a knee-length skirt made of cords. A belt plate of bronze decorated with spirals lay on her stomach. She also had a comb made of horn with her in the grave, attached to her belt. Around each arm was a ring of bronze and she had a slender ring in her ear. By her face lay a small box of bark with a bronze awl and the remains of a hair net. At the feet of the Egtved Girl a small bucket of bark had been placed, which once contained a type of beer. 
There was also a small bundle of clothing with the cremated bones of a 5-6-year-old child. A few bones from the same child were found in the bark box. The Egtved Girl saw the light of day again when her grave was excavated in 1921 – almost 3500 years later.
The short cord skirt she was buried in, and other clothing and artistic representations of women from that time period, suggest that this was what young adult women wore at the time (but frequently topless and with shorter skirts).

Egtved Girl's actual outfit.


A modern reconstruction of Egtved Girl's outfit.

These outfits were made possible by the fact that Denmark was much warmer then than it is now, although Denmark's climate is on track to return to those temperatures in the not so distant future. As the Old European Culture blog explains:
What was the climate like in Scandinavia at that time if girls could walk around dressed like this? Well much warmer. These girls lived during the so called "Minoan Warm Period" a period of time with much higher average temperatures in the Baltic than they are today. [A] [s]ign of how warm South Baltic was during the time when Egtved girl lived and died is that during that time millet ([a] type of grain) was grown in southern Scandinavia. Today millet is grown in tropical and subtropical regions...

According to this source:
Not much is known about the Minoan warm period beyond what can be gauged from cores from boreholes in the ice sheet. That the climate really was warmer then may be derived from that in the Minoan warm period, which occurred during the bronze age, millet was grown in southern Scandinavia. Today Millet is grown in tropical and subtropical regions, it is an important crop in Asia, Africa and in the southern U.S. The average annual temperature in Mississippi and Alabama is about 10 degrees, which should be compared with today's average annual temperature in Denmark, which is 8 degrees. So maybe the climate in the Minoan warm period, was about 2 degrees warmer than present in southern Scandinavia.
See also here.

A two degree Celsius difference in average annual temperatures turns out to be a pretty big deal.

About two hundred years later, the climate event of roughly 1177 BCE that triggered Bronze Age collapse, with a cooler and more arid climate that brought down multiple empires, would arrive.

N.B. The coloration and general phenotype of people in Denmark today came into being in Denmark roughly 500 to 1400 years before Egtved Girl lived. The modern phenotype was a product of admixture of the pre-existing Northern European people with migrants from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, roughly speaking, where Ukraine is today. 

The pre-existing Northern Europeans had fair hair and light colored eyes but darker, more olive colored skin, while the people of the Pontic-Caspian steppe had fair skin, but darker hair and eye colors. The body and head shape of people in Denmark also changed at about this time as a consequence of this admixture.

Giving Thanks


Monday, October 21, 2019

Estimating Time Depth With Mutation Rates Is Intrinsically Complex

Early estimates of the time depth at which genetic clades emerged were based upon a fixed molecular clock model that turns out to not reflect reality. Mutation does happen at predictable rates, but a workable model is more complex. Not all kinds of genetic mutations take place at the same rate.
Michael E. Goldberg and Kelley Harris, Great ape mutation spectra vary across the phylogeny and the genome due to distinct mutational processes that evolve at different rates (October 15, 2019) doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/805598  
Recent studies of hominoid variation have shown that mutation rates and spectra can evolve rapidly, contradicting the fixed molecular clock model. The relative mutation rates of three-base-pair motifs differ significantly among great ape species, suggesting the action of unknown modifiers of DNA replication fidelity. To illuminate the footprints of these hypothetical mutators, we measured mutation spectra of several functional compartments (such as late-replicating regions) that are likely targeted by localized mutational processes. Using genetic diversity from 88 great apes, we find that compartment-specific mutational signatures appear largely conserved between species. These signatures layer with species-specific signatures to create rich mutational portraits: for example, late-replicating regions in gorillas contain an identifiable mixture of a replication timing signature and a gorilla-specific signature. Our results suggest that cis-acting mutational modifiers are highly conserved between species and transacting modifiers are driving rapid mutation spectrum evolution.
The authors also deserve credit for clearly packing the key ideas of their paper into the title. 

Monday, October 14, 2019

The Exclusion Range For Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Continues To Expand


Figure 4: The effective Majorana mass mββ as a function of the smallest neutrino mass mMIN. We have used the current best-fit values and the 2σ errors of the oscillation parameters. The Majorana phases α21 and α31, and δ, are varied within their allowed intervals [0, 180º].
"While the grey area on top has been sought for, and excluded by direct searches, experiments will need to reach a sensitivity in the range of 0.01 eV in the effective mass parameter m(ββ) (yellow line) to be able to prove that the mass hierarchy of light neutrinos is normal. That is something that should become possible in the next few years."

The black oval added editorially by me in the figure above is the most likely part of the graph to correspond to reality based upon astronomy data regarding the maximum sum of the neutrino masses of the three neutrino masses, neutrino oscillation data, and other considerations, assuming for sake of argument that neutrinos have Majorana mass rather than Dirac mass (all of the other fundamental fermions of the Standard Model have Dirac mass only). For reference, as I noted in my previous post:
Assuming the increasingly experimentally favored normal hierarchy, and given that the mass difference between the heaviest neutrino mass and the middle neutrino mass is about 49.4 meV and the difference between the middle neutrino mass and the lightest neutrino mass is about 8.7 meV, [and considering plausibly motivated expectations discussed previously in that post] one would expect the lightest neutrino mass to be a little less than 1 meV, but probably not much lower than 0.5 meV.

This implies absolute neutrino masses of about 0.9 meV, 9.6 meV, and 59 meV, with a sum of the three neutrino masses equal to about 69.5 meV plus or minus about half an meV. This is very close to the minimum mass possible for the sum of the three neutrino mass eigenstates, given what we know already.
Unless neutrinos are Majorana particles (i.e. particles that are their own antiparticles), neutrinoless double beta decay doesn't happen at all, a conclusion that will take experiments somewhat more than 100 times more sensitive than the state of the art experiments done to date. We should be a factor of ten from that threshold in a few years, however.

If neutrinos are Majorana particles, the rate at which neutrinoless double beta decay occurs is a function of the effective Majorana neutrino mass shown on the Y axis, and the absolute mass of the lightest of the three neutrino masses. This is something that our experiments to date wouldn't have been able to see anyway, without regard to the nature of the neutrino mass hierarchy.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Some Standard Model Fundamental Constant Conjectures And Related Conjectures

Background

The Standard Model has many parameters that must be determined experimentally, although there is not a unique way to describe these constants as some constants are functions of other constants. For example, one could choose to make either the Higgs vev or the weak force dimensionless coupling constant part of your fundamental list of constants and derived the others from that. Similarly, you define either the dimensionless Higgs boson coupling constants called Yukawas, or the pole masses of the fundamental fermions and bosons, as the more fundamental quantity.

One way to summarize the list of experimentally measured constants in the Standard Model is that there are 12 fundamental fermion masses, 3 fundamental boson masses, 4 CKM matrix parameters (which govern the probability that quarks transform into different kinds of quarks), 4 PMNS matrix parameters (that govern the probability that neutrinos oscillate to different neutrino masses), and three standard model force coupling constants (for the electromagnetic, weak force and strong force), for a total of 23 experimentally measured parameters, plus some additional more general physical constants determined experimentally, including, at a minimum, Planck's constant and the speed of light in a vacuum, for a total of 25. This list, however, is somewhat redundant. One of the fundamental boson masses (either the W or the Z boson) can be derived from the other of the electroweak boson masses and the electromagnetic and weak force coupling constants, bringing the list to 24. 

Some of the most solid relationships conjectured below can eliminate one parameter each from the CKM matrix and PMNS matrix (the theta13 angle in each of them), the tau lepton mass (predicted by Koide's rule to be 1776.96894(7) MeV, which is consistent with the direct experimental measurement which has an uncertainty of 0.12 MeV, but much, much more precise), and the top quark mass (predicted to be 173,666(125) MeV based upon the relationship of the sum of the square of the fundamental particle masses given their measured values to the square of the Higgs vev, consistent with the direct measurement at 1.67 sigma, but with a precision better than the plus or minus 400 MeV in the directly measured experimental value) from the list, in theory reducing the number of truly independent experimentally measured parameters to 20. Less solid relationships, if developed further and validated, could further reduce this list substantially.


Gravity as explained through general relativity, has two more experimentally measured constants: the gravitational coupling constant a.k.a. Newton's constant "G", although it can be defined in one of several dimensionless ways, and the cosmological constant a.k.a. lambda (which is the most common, but also disputed explanation for phenomena attributed to "dark energy" that are not well understood at a fundamental level). This would bring the total number of fundamental constants of physics to 27. 


Some dark matter and/or modified gravity theories that seek to explain dark matter and/or dark energy phenomena, dispense with the cosmological constant and/or add one or more experimentally measured fundamental constants to explain dark matter and/or dark energy phenomena (and sometimes one more additional fermion and/or boson types as well).

Why these parameters take the values that they do is an open question that is mostly unanswerable at this time. But, almost everybody involved in this branch of physics intuitively and personally believes that these relationship are not just random and have some cause based upon some deeper theory that is not currently known to us.

Some conjectures.

* The CP violation parameters in the CKM matrix and PMNS matrix are an effect that is actually independent of the other three parameters in each matrix. It also is worth noting that the CP violation phase could be the same in the CKM matrix and PMNS matrix given the great uncertainty involved in the PMNS matrix value. In the CKM matrix, the CP violating phase is δ13 = 1.20 ± 0.08 radians (i.e. 68.8º plus or minus 4.6º). In the PMNS matrix, the mean measurement for the CP violating phase is 246º subject to very large error bars that make the central number measurement not very meaningful. The two values could also be complementary and actually add up to 360º.

One possibility that seems plausible is that the CP violation in both cases arises through W boson interactions (and possible a parallel fundamental boson currently unknown related to neutrino oscillation), which take place only with left parity matter and not with right parity matter. It further seems plausible to me that CP violation is maximal at tree level in the relevant interactions, and that deviations from maximal CP violation in W boson interactions arise from higher order loops.

* I strongly suspect for symmetry reasons and because massless particles do not experience the passage of time in the way that massive particles do, that any force mediated by a massless boson (i.e. electromagnetism mediated by photons, the strong force mediated by gluons with zero rest mass, and quantum gravity mediated by massive gravitons) are necessarily not CP violating as a result.

Similarly, particles that do not have electromagnetic charge and also decay in a matter-antimatter preserving fashion, like the massive Z boson and the Higgs boson, can likewise not violate CP on symmetry grounds (although Z bosons only interact with left parity particles which may be more subtly CP violating in a sense).

* I suspect that CPT is perfectly conserved in a final theory, as is conservation of mass-energy. I suspect that the non-conservation of energy in general relativity with a cosmological constant will be ultimately explained in some other way that conserves mass-energy in a final quantum gravity theory. I suspect that the matter-antimatter asymmetry largely results from matter going mostly forward in time following the Big Bang, while antimatter goes mostly backward in time following the Big Bang in a mirror universe where the second law of thermodynamics runs in the opposite direction.

* I suspect that all dark matter and dark energy phenomena will ultimately be explained as quantum gravity effects, and that dark matter particles (other than massless gravitons) will be ruled out. I suspect that the only BSM particles, other than massless gravitons, that have not yet been discovered, are limited to a possible neutrino oscillation boson, possible right handed neutrinos and left handed antineutrinos with the same mass as their parity partners and no Standard Model interactions, and some set of particles (less numerous than the current set of Standard Model particles) that give rise to the Standard Model particles (with the caveats noted above, if necessary) and no other particles whatsoever, such as fundamental string-theory like strings or some kind of preon.

* I suspect that baryon number and lepton number are conserved in all processes except sphaleron processes (if those actually even exist, and in which case B-L is still conserved), and possibly in the graviton equivalent to photo-production of particles. Hence, neutrinoless double beta decay does not occur, and neither do proton decay, or at the tree level, flavor changing neutral current processes.

* The conventional explanation of neutrino oscillation which is sufficient as a phenomenological theory is that there is a mismatch between three electroweak neutrino flavors and three mass eigenstates causing them to oscillate. But, the possibility that neutrino oscillation is actually mediated by a new fundamental boson analogous to the W boson, or that it involves a combined virtual W+ and W- boson loop, are possibilities that have not been ruled out to my satisfaction so far that could provide a first principles explanation of some of the associated physical constants that are measured experimentally.

* I seriously doubt that neutrinos are Majorana particles that are their own anti-particles, even though they lack electromagnetic charge and appear to come only in left handed neutrinos and right handed anti-neutrinos which would be inconsistent with the conventional Higgs mass generation mechanism. I likewise find a seesaw mechanism to be highly implausible. I do think it is plausible that there exist right handed neutrinos with the same mass as their left handed counterparts that don't interact with any of the three Standard Model forces and instead merely interact with their left handed counterparts, and left handed antineutrinos that are analogous, that make it possible for neutrinos to have a standard Higgs mechanism Dirac mass just like all of the other fundamental fermions in the Standard Model. I strongly suspect that there are no "sterile neutrinos" and that the "reactor anomaly" that suggested that they might exist with a mass on the order of 1 eV is actually just a fluke or an experimental design problem.

* In both the CKM matrix and the PMNS matrix, ignoring CP violation, the probability of a first to second generation transition times the probability of a second to third generation transition, is equal to the probability of a first to third generation transition. Thus, these are actually matrixes with at most three independent parameters (including CP violation), not four. It is possible that these two remaining generation transition parameters can even be reduced to two experimentally measured parameters or even just one for both matrixes, but simply reducing them from three to two for each matrix would represent scientific progress. If the same one or two parameters can be used to explain generation transitions in bot the CKM matrix and the PMNS matrix, this would probably be due to a concept known as "quark-lepton complementarity" since the sum of the CKM and PMNS matrix mixing angles for theta12 are fairly close to a combined 45º (which is the maximal mixing angle), as are the the sum of the CKM and PMNS matrix mixing angles for theta23.

In the case of the PMNS matrix, applying this formula with angles in radians, this implies a mixing angle from the first to third generation of 7.994º, while the measured value is 8.54º plus or minus 0.15º. Given the uncertainties in theta12 which is 33.62º plus or minus about 0.77º and theta 23 which is 42.8º plus or minus about +1.9º/-2.9º, this results are consistent at two sigma. 

In the case of the CKM matrix, this implies a first to third generation mixing angle of 0.172º compared to the measured value of 0.201º plus or minus 0.011º which is also consistent at two sigma due to the uncertainty in this value combined with the uncertainty in the other two measured values that enter into the calculation.

Doing a global fit of the CKM and PMNS parameters with these constraints would be interesting and informative.

This relationship also suggests that the probability of a fermion generation change in logically prior in a deeper theory to the masses of the particles at particular generations.

* It is plausible to me that there may be some functional relationship between the Cabibbo Angle (of the CKM matrix a.k.a. lambda in the Wolfenstein parameterization) and Weinberg Angle (which pertains to the relative masses of the W boson and the Z boson as a result of fundamental relationships between electroweak theory quantities), as they are numerically quite similar and both involve the weak force, although they are not similar enough to each other to have values consistent with each other given current measurement precision.

This observation and the fact that all fundamental particles that interact via the weak force have a rest mass, while all fundamental particles that do not have rest mass do not interact via the weak force, makes wonder if the W boson plays a more central role in generating the fundamental particle rest masses (including the neutrino masses) and the Higgs boson is less important in this process than commonly assumed, with the W boson dynamically balancing the fundamental fermion masses.

* The overall mass scale of the Standard Model fermions is probably a function of the Higgs vacuum expectation value (which is itself intimately related at a functional level to the weak force coupling constant) since the sum of the square of the fundamental fermion pole masses is equal to the square of the Higgs vev consistently up to a 1.3 error in the measurements, with the uncertainties in the top quark mass measurement (85.2% of the uncertainty) and the Higgs boson mass measurement (13.6% of the uncertainty) dominating that uncertainty, and uncertainty in bottom quark mass (0.6% of the uncertainty), the charm quark mass (0.5% of the uncertainty) and the W boson mass (0.1% of the uncertainty) accounting for almost of of the remaining uncertainty in the comparison of the experimentally valued masses to the experimentally determined value of the Higgs vev (which is known to a precision of one part per 246 million).

This also explains why the Higgs boson has the mass that it does (to fill the gap not filled by the other fundamental particles of the Standard Model). From this perspective, the Higgs boson mass is very "natural". The "hierarchy problem" related to the Higgs boson mass is simply a function of an unnatural way to think about the means by which the Higgs boson mass arises.

If this is the explanation of the overall mass scale of the rest masses of the Standard Model fundamental particles, it appears that the fundamental fermion masses account for slightly less than half of the total, while the fundamental boson masses (which are known more precisely) account for slightly more than half of the total (something that wouldn't change if there was a massless graviton). 

The best available estimates of the top quark mass are a bit too low (by 2.6 sigma) and the best available estimates of the Higgs boson mass are a bit too high (by 3.3 sigma), both of which would be necessary to make them exactly equal, and since both errors are independent and both have to be correct, the combined deviation of that theoretical prediction is very significant (between 4 sigma and 5 sigma). This almost symmetry between fermions and bosons (in which the squared masses of the bosons accounts for about 51% of the total and the squared masses of the fermions accounts for about 49% of the total), which might be exactly equal at some energy scale greater than pole masses, perhaps the Higg vev energy scale, since boson masses for the most part decline with energy scale faster than fermion masses do, may explain why supersymmetry provides the insights that it does and also why supersymmetry itself is not necessary.

Even if the sum of the square of the fermion masses turn out to not be exactly equal to the sum of the square of the fundamental boson masses, the more general relationship between fundamental fermion pole masses and the Higgs vev that is empirically well established to the limits of current measurement precision, would at least explain the magnitude of the top quark mass as a "filler" after all of the other fundamental fermion masses are accounted for.

This analysis, if theoretically sound, is also one of the more fruitful arguments to rule out the existence of new heavy fundamental particles types, particularly as top quark, Higgs boson and W boson mass measurements grow more precise. If the Higgs vev really is equally to the square of the fundamental particle masses, the uncertainties in the known fundamental particle masses leave no room for particles with masses over a few GeV that have mostly been ruled out in direct searches, to have been omitted.

* The rank order of the mixing angles of theta12 and theta23 in the CKM and PMNS matrixes has a relationship to the magnitude of the mass ratios of the starting and ending points involved in those transitions (adjusting in some appropriate matter, such as a geometric mean, for the fact that the CKM matrix involves two sets of mass differences per generation and not just one). Likewise, by some appropriate measure, bigger differences in mixing angles correspond to bigger differences in mass ratios of the starting and ending points involved in those transitions. Note that this description very carefully avoids stating a particular functional relationship, which is unknown.

This implies that the ratio of third generation to second generation quark partners in W boson transitions is higher than the ratio of second generation to first generation quark partners in W boson transitions since the mixing angles are 2.38% and 13.04% respectively. The respective geometric means in those case are about 275 and 100 respectively, and the ratio of the mixing angles is about 5.5.

The neutrino mixing angle for the third generation to the second is about 42.8% (assuming a first quadrant value), and the neutrino mixing angle for the second generation to the first is about 33.62% , and the ratio of the mixing angles is about 0.79. So, the ratio of the third generation neutrino mass to the second generation neutrino mass (which is about 5.6 or less), should be smaller than the ratio of the second generation neutrino mass to the first generation neutrino mass. 

If the pattern of the CKM matrix were to hold, one would expect the ratio of the second heaviest neutrino mass to the lightest neutrino mass to be about 9. 

Assuming the increasingly experimentally favored normal hierarchy, and given that the mass difference between the heaviest neutrino mass and the middle neutrino mass is about 49.4 meV and the difference between the middle neutrino mass and the lightest neutrino mass is about 8.7 meV, one would expect the lightest neutrino mass to be a little less than 1 meV, but probably not much lower than 0.5 meV.

This implies absolute neutrino masses of about 0.9 meV, 9.6 meV, and 59 meV, with a sum of the three neutrino masses equal to about 69.5 meV plus or minus about half an meV. This is very close to the minimum mass possible for the sum of the three neutrino mass eigenstates, given what we know already.

* The difference between the electron mass and the lowest neutrino mass is due fundamentally in some manner (possibly due to their respective self-couplings) to the ratio of the electromagnetic force coupling constant to the weak force coupling constant which is of approximately the same order of magnitude. Likewise the electron and up quark masses may be a function of their self-couplings, although the mechanism by which higher generation fermions acquire their masses and why they have only three generations, is still somewhat mysterious even if we can come up for a mathematical formula that accurately determines the fundamental fermion masses.

* Lepton universality is probably only an approximate rather than an absolute symmetry that holds only because the ratio of the mass of each charged lepton to the mass of each charged lepton less the corresponding neutrino mass is so close to 1 for all three of the charged leptons. Violations of lepton universality in excess of this magnitude is probably due to experimental and/or theoretical error.

* The fact that Koide's Rule holds for the charged leptons to the limits of experimental accuracy, is probably for fundamental reasons similar to those for lepton universality and the fact that there are only three charged leptons.

* The ratio of the quark masses appears to be, at first order, the product of something very close to Koide's rule, but adjusting for the possibility that there could be transitions other than the most common one implicated by Koide's rule implemented directly, by making an adjustment of an order of magnitude equal to the mass difference of the omitted transition time the probability of the omitted transition taking place under Koide's rule.

* I think that it is plausible that the Standard Model formulation of the fundamental equations and axioms of quantum chromodynamics a.k.a. QCD a.k.a. the modern explanation of the strong force that holds protons, neutrons and other hadrons together, is incomplete and missing a rule or two, or a key axiom or two. For example, I would not be surprised if a missing axiom established that free standing glueballs were impossible for some reason.