Archaeological supplement B to Damgaard et al. 2018: discussion of the archaeology of Central Asian and East Asian Neolithic to Bronze Age hunter-gatherers and early pastoralists, including consideration of horse domestication

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Zenodo via the DOI in this recordThis is part of the additional supplementary material for Damgaard et al., The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aar7711. Note that the author accepted manuscript version of the article plus supplementary material and additional supplementary material is in ORE at http://hdl.handle.net/10871/32791The archaeological evidence relating to selected key cultures from Central and East Asia from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age is summarized. These cultures include the Eneolithic (Copper Age) Botai culture of northern Kazakhstan, the Bronze Age Okunevo culture from the Minusinsk Basin in Russia and Neolithic to Bronze Age cultures of the Baikal Region in East Siberia. Special consideration is given to the debate surrounding horse domestication within the Botai Culture, and the key lines of evidence are summarized

Observation of a J^PC = 1-+ exotic resonance in diffractive dissociation of 190 GeV/c pi- into pi- pi- pi+

The COMPASS experiment at the CERN SPS has studied the diffractive dissociation of negative pions into the pi- pi- pi+ final state using a 190 GeV/c pion beam hitting a lead target. A partial wave analysis has been performed on a sample of 420000 events taken at values of the squared 4-momentum transfer t' between 0.1 and 1 GeV^2/c^2. The well-known resonances a1(1260), a2(1320), and pi2(1670) are clearly observed. In addition, the data show a significant natural parity exchange production of a resonance with spin-exotic quantum numbers J^PC = 1-+ at 1.66 GeV/c^2 decaying to rho pi. The resonant nature of this wave is evident from the mass-dependent phase differences to the J^PC = 2-+ and 1++ waves. From a mass-dependent fit a resonance mass of 1660 +- 10+0-64 MeV/c^2 and a width of 269+-21+42-64 MeV/c^2 is deduced.Comment: 7 page, 3 figures; version 2 gives some more details, data unchanged; version 3 updated authors, text shortened, data unchange

The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from AAAS via the DOI in this recordThe file includes the article, supplementary material and additional supplementary materialThe published version of the supplementary materials are at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2018/05/08/science.aar7711.DC1Part of the additional supplementary materials for this article are in ORE at http://hdl.handle.net/10871/32792The Yamnaya expansions from the western steppe into Europe and Asia during the Early Bronze Age (~3000 BCE) are believed to have brought with them Indo-European languages and possibly horse husbandry. We analyze 74 ancient whole-genome sequences from across Inner Asia and Anatolia and show that the Botai people associated with the earliest horse husbandry derived from a hunter-gatherer population deeply diverged from the Yamnaya. Our results also suggest distinct migrations bringing West Eurasian ancestry into South Asia before and after but not at the time of Yamnaya culture. We find no evidence of steppe ancestry in Bronze Age Anatolia from when Indo-European languages are attested there. Thus, in contrast to Europe, Early Bronze Age Yamnaya-related migrations had limited direct genetic impact in Asia.The study was supported by the Lundbeck Foundation (EW), the Danish National Research Foundation (EW), and KU2016 (EW). Research at the Sanger Institute was supported by the Wellcome Trust (grant 206194). RM was supported by an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship (ALTF 133-2017). JK was supported by the Human Frontiers Science Program (LT000402/2017). Botai fieldwork was supported by University of Exeter, Archeology Exploration Fund and Niobe Thompson, Clearwater Documentary. AB was supported by NIH grant 5T32GM007197-43. GK was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and European Research Council. MP was funded by Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), project number 276-70-028, IU was funded by the Higher education commission of Pakistan. Archaeological materials from Sholpan and Grigorievka were obtained with partial financial support of the budget program of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan “Grant financing of scientific research for 2018-2020” No. AP05133498 “Early Bronze Age of the Upper Irtysh”

Hunting down the X17 boson at the CERN SPS

Recently, the ATOMKI experiment has reported new evidence for the excess of $e^+ e^-$ events with a mass $\sim$17 MeV in the nuclear transitions of $^4$He, that they previously observed in measurements with $^8$Be. These observations could be explained by the existence of a new vector $X17$ boson. So far, the search for the decay $X17 \rightarrow e^+ e^-$ with the NA64 experiment at the CERN SPS gave negative results. Here, we present a new technique that could be implemented in NA64 aiming to improve the sensitivity and to cover the remaining $X17$ parameter space. If a signal-like event is detected, an unambiguous observation is achieved by reconstructing the invariant mass of the $X17$ decay with the proposed method. To reach this goal an optimization of the $X17$ production target, as well as an efficient and accurate reconstruction of two close decay tracks, is required. A dedicated analysis of the available experimental data making use of the trackers information is presented. This method provides independent confirmation of the NA64 published results [Phys. Rev. D101, 071101 (2020)], validating the tracking procedure. The detailed Monte Carlo study of the proposed setup and the background estimate shows that the goal of the proposed search is feasible