Wednesday, November 24, 2010

The Journey of Man



Title: The Journey of Man – A Genetic Odyssey
Author: Spencer Wells
Publisher: Penguin Books India 2003 (First published 2002)
ISBN: 978-0-143-02995-3
Pages: 198

A really fascinating book which you can literally read cover to cover in one go. Spencer Wells is a noted researcher on genetic studies of ancient societies and has presented a lot of cutting edge theories to the audience. The book traces the journey of modern man from Africa where he originated and how he went on to colonize all parts of the world by incessant journies, surpassing all obstacles which sought to stop him. Many of the theories and ideas presented are of the colleagues and teachers of the author, so we can be assured that he is well informed of the subject learned from the masters themselves – the perks for being at Stanford, one of the world’s leading educational institutions. The book was originally conceived as part of a documentary film project of the same name.

Charles Darwin’s work, ‘The Descent of Man’ addressed the issue of the origin of humans. He considered all races to belong to a single species, with only minor physical variations. This insight is more than justified by later researchers, and Darwin’s prescience is put in greater limelight when the fact that Linnaeus, who categorized the living into species, sought to classify humans on racial lines, is considered. According to Linnaeus, the human species should be sub-divided into americanus, asiaticus, europaeus and monstrosus. The ideas were long held among the academic community, as Carleton Coon, a noted U.S. anthropologist subscribed to these views and made publications in academic circles developing on these lines by the middle of the 20th century. This century was notorious for the racial prejudice and violence enacted on various parts of the globe. The ‘eugenics’ movement which believed that offsprings can be ‘crafted’ or moulded into desirable patterns by carefully selecting the parentage – sometimes forcibly preventing people having mental disorders to reproduce – gained ascendancy during the first quarter of the 20th century. Francis Galton’s studies which were a forerunner to Coon, helped pave the way for the eugenics movement in Britain.

The diversity among living humans came out from the studies on blood samples by Karl Landsteiner in 1901. He categorized blood into different groups and performed studies on the genetic makeup which produced such diversity in blood groups. It was he who named the groups A, B, O and likewise. Building on this path-breaking study, a Swiss couple, named Hirszfeld conducted research on the soldiers of World War I of different nationalities and presented a theory that people of blood groups A and B represent pure populations of aboriginal humans, with group A prevalent in northern Europe and group B prominent in India. All these analyses were done before the discovery of DNA, the real genetic fingerprint, by Crick and Watson in 1953. Richard Lewontin in 1972 studied the genetic variations among different racial groups and found that 85% of the variation is within populations, 7% among populations in a race (Greeks vs Swedes, for example) and only 8% variation against different races. The sub-species theory held on for so long fell flat on its face, as a result. Studies by Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Anthony Edwards in 1964 on bloodgroups of different races suggested that Africans were the most distant from all others, while Europeans and Asians were clumped together. Further programs by Rebecca Cann in 1987 on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA, for short) showed that all the mtDNA stem from one woman, who is postulated to have lived about 150,000 years ago, probably in Africa. Africans, as a group showed the greatest variation in mtDNA signifying that they have been evolving and diverging for longer time than the others. Analysis on fossils of the hominid Homo erectus indicates that African and Asian erectus shared a common ancestor 2 million years ago.

Like the mtDNA which is carried over from mother to daughter, the Y chromosome is handed over to the son from his father. Analysis of Y chromosomes, particulary some of the polymorphisms in it can also be used to trace the ancestral origins of populations. This chromosome is a bit different from the others, as they are seen only in males and the number of active genes in them is only 21, far short of the average figure of 1500 for the other chromosomes. The variations on the transmissive paths are well understood and when extrapolated, gave a result of 150,000 years as the time period on which it evolved from a universal father. Refined DNA experiments done in the 90s brought the date of the last common ancestor to 59,000 years before the present. Such a difference in dates of the female and male ancestors (150,000 and 59,000 years respectively) suggest that these ancient Adam and Eve might never have met! One of the limiting factors on analysis which runs the whole gamut of several millenia loses the resolution and the results also become vague. Present African populations which carry ancient lineages are found today in Ethiopia, Sudan and parts of eastern and southern Africa, around its rift valley. The San people in Namibia is a particularly favourite candidate for being the ancestors of the entire modern humans. Their language incorporates clicking sounds which some scientists believe might have been the precursors of the development of speech in modern humans. Similar ‘click’ languages are also seen in parts of east Africa. From these tribes and indications from fossils, we may deduce that the common ancestor might be of the same average height as most of the humans are today, with dark skin (but not as dark as typical Africans), thin, perhaps with an epicanthic fold (thickening of skin above the eyes).

Thus we can be reasonably sure that human migration started from Africa 60,000 years ago probably due to a change in climate which drove the inhabitants out of it. But, the human remains unearthed from Australia are also dated to a period not very later than this time. The early humans might have followed a coastal route along the Asian landmass and hopped over some of the islands in south east Asia. Since the world was under an ice age, the sea level was tens of metres below the present level and the sea crossing might not have been that difficult as it may seem to be at present. Following the sea route is crucial as no other path would have ensured the same climate, food availability and the same tool kit. Even about 6000 years ago, south east Asia was largely inhabited by Negrito people. A case in point is the Onge and Jarawa tribes of Andaman Islands who may be called the living fossils of a bygone race. The migration to Australia is not well corroborated by evidence from India, as the archeological finds were dated to only 40,000 years. The author suggests that the Indian coasts through which the ancients travelled might be several metres below sea level at present and what remains found so far might have been that of the people who ventured inland for better prospects.

What exactly prompted the forefathers from issuing out of Africa in a so called, ‘Great Leap Forward’, 60,000 years ago? Apart from climatic pressures, development of language during this time caused greater social cohesion and complex organised behaviour, making them masters of group hunting. The development of language might have been caused by a beneficient mutation in the DNA. Migration from Africa displaced the Neanderthals (another human species) from their homelands in Eurasia. This displacement may not be entirely due to the extermination at the hands of the newcomers, but the scarcity of food due to onset of ice age would have caused excess pressure on them. Early humans settled in the Middle east and moved along the steppes and split into two groups at the Pamir Knots, one group going north to central Asia and the other going south to India. The central Asian group further split into three, with one set destined to China, the other to Europe and the third through Bering landbridge to the Americas. The Indian group is marked by a genetic marker named M20 in the Y chromosome which is found in 50% of the people in south India. This group might surely have come in contact with the people of the early wave (Australian march) and might have decimated them.

Before extensive genetic studies were carried out, there were prominent anthropologists with the view that Europeans were evolved separately from the Neanderthals. Svante Paabo and Matthias Krings provded definite proof to the contrary by their study of mtDNA of Neanderthal fossils and established that these two species shared a common ancestor only about 500,000 years ago. The Neanderthals were scattered into smaller groups and the social behaviour were not well improved. The rising population levels among the modern humans ensured a positive feedback for further growth by making available more people to care for the child while the parents can be ‘gainfully’ employed elsewhere! Presence of older people around and grand-mothering helped the human society immensely.

Archeological evidence from Clovis sites suggests that human settlements were not present in north America earlier than 15,000 years. The central Asian hunters who crossed over to Alaska around 40,000 years ago might have been stopped there due to heavy glaciation in the ice ages. This prevented from going south of the continent and the thawing around 20,000 years towards the end of the ice age cleared their way to create settlements in the American mainland. Judging from the narrow variety of the DNA variations, the author claims that at most only a few hundred immigrants might have crossed the Bering landbridge. Many giant land mammals were made extinct by excessive hunting. The wooly mammoth and the horse were among them and the horse was reintroduced into the Americas by the Spaniards after Columbus discovered America in the 15th century. A second wave of migration might have happened from China. Thus, by 10,000 years all continents were mastered by the human race.

Around this time, another ‘Great Leap Forward’ materialized. The last ice age ended and the resultant precipitation and availability of moisture helped agriculture to spread mainly in the Middle east and China. The fashion soon spread to the Mediterranean rim and copied by barbarians from inner Europe. Rice was domesticated in China and carried by the farmers to various corners of south east Asia in another wave of migration which displaced the earlier Negritos inhabiting there. With agriculture began the neolithic age. Population exploded due to the sedentary lifestyle, but the death rate was also higher due to the prevalence of infectious diseases due to increased population and close proximity to animals. Moreover, as the wealth increased, warfare among different tribes also grew in sophistication and fatalities. Hence, the farmers died younger than the hunter gatherers, but the numbers were kept up because of higher birth rates. Development of culture and language families also happened around this time. A proto-Indo European language originated in the steppes of southern Russia which covered most of Eurasia. A genetic marker named M17 found commonly among people from the Czech Republic to Altai mountains in Siberia are also seen in a majority of Indians speaking Indo-European languages, suggesting massive ingress from Central Asia during the last 10,000 years.

After completing the odyssey the author discusses the melting pot of modern world in which people from various races mix indiscriminately, thus seriously compromising future research in this field. The lament seems to be purely academical and no racist intonations are discernible. Since any genetic test on any individual in a cosmopolitan country like the U.S. is sure to present the same genetic markers, the variation among different nationalities will be lost. While this may be blissful for the greater unity of the human race, it might sound the death knell for such fields of study.

The book is so easy to read and understand. Wells has a knack of riveting the reader’s attention to the points which he narrates in so clear detail. The navigation between various chapters is seamless attesting to the origins of the book in a video documentary. This is a must-read for everybody. The drawbacks which can be pointed out is quite few. The monochrome plates featuring people of various races are not titled, causing the reader to flip to the index page frequently where it is listed. The images shown are not very impressive and we might wonder why some of them are included in the first place! Also, the author passes opinions on sociological issues researched only poorly. Thus we see him announcing that women in India could change castes in India’s caste-system which is nowhere near the actual state of things. Wells depends greatly on the works of his teacher Luca Cavalli-Sforza and quotes extensively from his works. And, his references are mainly his own colleagues thereby reducing the variation in reference material.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Earth After Us


Title: The Earth After Us – What Legacy Will Humans Leave In The Rocks?

Author: Jan Zalasiewicz
Publisher: Oxford University Press 2008 (First)
ISBN: 978-0-19-921497-6
Pages: 241

Dr. Jan Zalasiewicz is a lecturer in geology at the University of Leicester, and was formerly with the British Geological Survey. A field geologist, palaentologist and stratigrapher, he teaches various aspects of geology and Earth history and researches fossil ecosystems and environments spanning more than half a billion years of geological time. He has published over a hundred papers in scientific journals. This book hinges on a hypothetical scenario which unfolds 100 million years in the future when our Earth is visited upon by a group of intergalactic travellers. These ‘creatures’ may find the earth to be devoid of human life, as humans would have long gone extinct by their own foolish actions of modifying the climate, inadvertently, that is. Perhaps the future visitors would still find intelligent life forms like some form of rodents which had evolved during this time unmolested and ready in a position to assume wider control of the planet they virtually own among themselves. The would be explorers might experience the same difficulties our own palaentologists faced during the last two-three centuries, excavating the hidden treasures from rocks, mud, sediments and other fossil-preserving areas. The author puts forward the question that whether the visitors would be able to deduce the presence of a bi-pedal, super-intelligent life-form which ruled the earth like no species did before or after for a brief span of about 10,000 years, which is nothing but a wink in geological time. He explaints the standard practises in geology, goes on to explain how the information bearing strata are formed underground, plate tectonics, how earth’s crust is undergoing upheavals and downfalls, what the people who aspire to become fossils should do to ensure that their remains turn up under the microscopes of a future society.

Plate tectonics happen only on earth, as compared to other planets in the solar system due to its liquid core consisting of molten iron. This liquidity causes the continents placed on the crust to move in different directions which depend on the subduction movements of undersea plates. The idea was first proposed by Alfred Wegener, but was largely ignored by the scientific community as the claims were outlandish and the proofs, speculative at best. Later geologists’ consistent research proved it to be beyond doubt and many questions which were left unanswered now succumbed to human intuition. The crust, which is the outermost layer of earth goes up and down in tectonic escalators. Sea floor may become mountain tops and cities may go down under sea, for which we have ample evidences. When the sea floor goes up as mountains and is subjected to erosion by wind and water, the fossils contained in it become visible to naked eyes. An area which is going down will be further deposited with sediments and the extra weight further pushes it down. This downgoing areas are the places best suited for preservation as they will form strata which are immune to erosion, but nevertheless subjected to immense pressures which may make them out-of-shape and hard to reconstruct.

The earth has experienced several ice ages and we are now living in an interglacial period (between two ice ages) which is warm, but started only about 10,000 years back. At that time, the earth was a really cold place, with most of North America and Europe under glaciers several kilometers thick and a sea level which was hundreds of meters below than at present. The reason behind the ice ages were not clear to scientists. James Croll and Milutin Milankovitch, who were astronomers predicted that the variations in the amount of sunlight collected by earth due to changes in the tilt of earth’s axis, wobbles of the axis and the changes in the ellipticity of earth’s orbit caused the ice ages and other climate cycles. Stratigraphic evidence collected from deep sea samples around the globe accurately confirmed the predictions made in the 19th century and now such Milankovitch cycles, consisting of sub-cycles of 100000, 40000 and 20000 years are now an accepted fact. The cycling between global warmth and ice ages are asymmetric – the onset of cold is gradual, while the warming is relatively faster. Geologically, we are on the way to another ice age. “All things being equal, the Earth should now be sliding slowly back towards the grip of ice. We have had almost exactly 10,000 years of warmth, which is already longer than any other warm spell over at least the last 400,000 years. This climatic gift has allowed our civilization to develop to its current extent, where it colonizes virtually every agriculturally productive part of the globe” (p.75). But human induced global warming is upsetting all adjustments on earth’s regulatory mechanism. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere now stands at 380 ppm, which is the highest in a span of one million years! The pre-industrial level was 280 ppm and the levels during the last glacial period was 180 ppm. The carbon dioxide level is increasing by 0.5% or 1.5 ppm every year. The level of methane, which is a much more potent green house gas than CO2, is twice that of one million year ago. We seem to be sliding into a full blown warmth with increased sea levels and most of the cities getting flooded. However, this flooding may preserve them for examination by future explorers, which is little consolation for them!

The study of fossils in strata are called biostratigraphy and was invented by a civil engineer named William Smith in England. By the turn of the 19th century he noticed the remains of marine fauna such as ammonites, sea-urchins and others in strata and prepared the first geological map of England. Dating of these fossils took place later, when radioactive decay was discovered. In addition to radiometric dating, a sort of time reckoning based on the astronomical cycles of earth (Milankovitch cycles) are also in vogue which is much more precise than radiometric dating. The would be researchers would find that there was a mass extinction (almost 95% of the species) by the end of paleozoic era and is known as the Permian extinction. At the end of the mesozoic era, there was another extinction, this time triggered by a meteorite impact which destroyed – among others – the different species of dinosaurs which roamed the earth at that time.

The human species, though it controlled the planet like no other life-form previously would lay very few materials to be recovered as fossils in the future. Almost all of our present day articles like plastic, machinery, computers and such things would be quickly recycled to base elements and other compounds by natural activities once the humans disappear from earth. Also, our rich culture has stood on the face of the earth for only 200 years, right after the industrial revolution which boosted the numbers and economic well being of humans in every part of the world. (It cannot be said every part but surely there are some ripple effects). A span of 200 years is virtually indistinguishable in the strata as the thickness of such a duration in it would be nearly 1 mm. But determined explorers would still be able to deduce a lot of things from such scant evidence. The paleobiology can be deduced from the analysis of pollen grains embedded in these layers. Studies in Europe show the growth of tundra grass, then birch forest, then pine, then oaks etc from the study of pollen, mirroring the removal of ice from most of the continent. Such difference in temperatures depend directly on the CO2 content. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes the seas to become acidic, thereby slowing down the growth of coral reefs which lock away excess CO2 in the form of calcium carbonate, but in the short term, when this is formed from two bicarbonate ions, a carbon dioxide molecule is released into the atmosphere. But this will be small – some tens of millions of tons of carbon every year, as compared to 7 billion tons emitted by humans. The mechanisms for emission and remission of carbon dioxide are so numerous and interlinked that a true understanding of how they will respond is still poorly understood. Increase in CO2 will produce global warming due to positive feedback like release of absorbed CO2 in ocean and land and clathrates. On the other hand, there is a mechanism by which the increased weathering of rocks will reduce carbon dioxide levels. The positive feedback happens over the scale of hundreds or thousands of years while the negative feedback (rock weathering) works over hundreds of thousands of years thereby negating the chances of humans to take advantage of it. By the time the earth regulates the amount of carbon dioxide back to manageable levels, the human race would long have gone extinct.

The author gives a few suggestions to tide over the crisis. “A clear prospect of direct action, perhaps, and directed application of substantial resources (a modest proportion of the world’s military budget would go a long way) to smooth out the bumpy ride that looks to be in store for the human race. The adoption of softer energy paths. A re-foresting of the world. Finding contentment without the compulsive overuse of resources. Perhaps most importantly, curbing population growth – though without the natural selection of the strongest and most ruthless. To achieve substainable numbers while still curing the ill and succouring the weak would be our civilization’s greatest triumph” (p.239).

A clear book written by an expert geologist with an empathetic heart for the society’s well being and preservation. The author is obviously at ease with the subject matter and presents the details with the relish of a master craftsman. The arguments are outright logical and the sharp conclusions which follow are natural and convincing. The book is excellently divided to chapters preserving the modularity and comprehensiveness. Rather than attempting to see the earth through the eyes of alien visitors a hundred-million years from now, we should focus on how our own geologists unearthed the secrets of ages long past from the meagre samples they had at their disposal. This book helps us do so.

There are very few improvements which could be suggested, but the total absence of illustrations or diagrams is the most prominent. A book of such nature, covering a time span of billions of years would do well with a set of nice colour plates. The technical language of the geologist author sometime goes over the heads of ordinary readers like myself who have no initiation to the wonders of geology. This makes some of the passages tough for laymen. Also, the pessimistic view represented in many chapters, like the human society is doomed, whatever we may do etc is disheartening. We are not fully knowledgable about the resilience of our species for such a long haul, but still we might expect to find some humans to live somewhere on the planets, which the author claims to be full of teeming life even then!

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Monday, November 15, 2010

The Myth of Indus Valley Script











Title: The Myth of Indus Valley Script
Authors: Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, John B Henderson, Michael Witzel
Publisher: Academic Excellence 2008 (First)
ISBN: 978-81-89901-80-6
Pages: 161

This book is really a cheat. Nothing is there, save a research paper running through 52 most boring pages from which the title of the book is borrowed. The paper is written by three above mentioned authors, except Henderson. The book is presented by Sunil Roy who happily takes the precaution to explain the subject matter a bit, thus excusing himself from any consumer protection litigation from readers who have purchased this book. Though the theme of the book is historical, its price is astronomical! Paying Rs. 650 for a research paper which you can easily download from the internet for free (legally, I am not alluding piracy sites) is not what any sane person would do. Outside India, the rate is US$ 40! In addition to the paper mentioned above, 48 pages of a Powerpoint presentation (probably the one used by the authors in one of their mock assemblies!) is given. The third part is another paper, titled “Neurobiology, Layered Texts and Correlative Cosmologies: A Cross-Cultural Framework for Premodern History”, of another 52 pages which doesn’t have any relevance at all, to the subject matter of our concern. So, take this book only if you pick it up from a library and you are willing to waddle through historical muck and conjuration.

The Indus Valley Civilization is considered to be one of the four literate centres of early ancient world. The Indian nation owes its existence in its present form to the practises and mode of life originated on the vast region covered under this great ancient culture. The archeological findings of the civilization was made in 1921-22 by Sir John Marshall, the Director General of Archeological Survey of India, mainly at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, which are now in Pakistan. The excavations covering areas of tens of thousands of square kilometres reaped huge benefits as about 4000 seals carrying inscriptions were recovered from many places. The intentions of the British in actively digging out the remains were not entirely benevolent as evidenced by the comment by Alexander Cunningham, the first director of the Survey. He said, “an undertaking of vast importance to the Indian Government politically, and to British public religiously. To the first body, it would show that India had generally been divided into numerous petty chiefdoms, which had invariably been the case upon every successful invasion, while whenever she had been under one ruler, she had always repelled foreign conquest with determined resolution. To other body, it would show that Brahminism, instead of being unchanged and unchangeable religion which has subsisted for ages, was comparatively modern origin and had been constantly receiving additions and alterations; facts which proved that the establishment of the Christian religion in India must ultimately succeed” (p.2, from Cunningham’s record in 1843).

The authors’ assertion is that the Indus civilization was not literate and they argue that the ‘writing’ which was in vogue for about 600 years was not even evolving towards linguistical ideas. The brevity of inscriptions, (average signs per inscription is 4.6, the longest being 17 symbols long) indicate that the signs are symbolic and mythological in character and do not convey any language at all. In fact, they compare it to the airport and highway signs of present-day world! Efforts to link these signs to the linguistic origins of Dravidian, and Vedic dialects are manifestations of the political pressures of the people conducting those studies. Such outright affront on the socio-political conditions in India does not take into serious account the researches by Parpola, the noted Finnish historian who had carried out extensive studies on the topic. Another scholar, Iravatham Mahadevan’s contributions are not even given the decent mention it deserves. The authors blame all scholars, right from Marshall himself, for assuming that the ancient people were literate and attempting to decrypt the symbols. When all the cobwebs of rhetoric and pedantic references are filtered out, the skeleton of the argument is concise, “since you have not been able to decrypt the script, it doesn’t have a solution!”. Any literate civilization which wrote on perishable materials like the Indus people have also left behind longer texts on more durable materials.

Another argument is that about 400-600 different symbols were used in all the inscriptions and this huge number indicates that such a complex system cannot be used to encode speech. The authors’ selective myopia is self-evident if we remember that the Chinese syllabary contains about 2000 different characters, but still records speech? The high frequency signs compiled by Mahadevan are not repeated in a single inscription. Also, ‘singletons’ (the symbols which appear only once or very few times) constitute about 79% of the total. The authors give two probable reasons for the culture not going literate.

1) The ruling elite didn’t want to spread information among the lay people, which is substantiated by the attitudes of Brahmins who followed the Indus people in their footsteps as their Vedas are recited, remembered and taught to disciples, without resorting to any written format. The Indus society were insulated from outside linguistic pressures, as many Indus seals were recovered from Mesopotamian sites, but not vice versa.

2) The Indus culture extended over a far wider geographic area than any of the early ancient civilization. Such a large conglomeration of societies meant that they were multi-linguistic and a common language could not form. In the absence of it, they resorted to non-verbal signs and symbols which can be understood by all.

To summarize, the seven conclusions drawn by the authors are listed below.

1) Indus signs were symbolic and mythological in character – not linguistic.
2) Like other nonlinguistic sign systems, Indus symbols have multiple and not single referents (‘multivocality’)
3) The oldest and most persistent use of Indus signs shows up in agricultural magic and rituals – not in accounting contexts, as in Mesopotamia or Persia.
4) We find both male and female imagery in Indus agricultural mythology, but in the inscriptional evidence (as opposed to other sources), male imagery prevails.
5) Much of Indus mythology was apparently reenacted in outdoor rituals involving mass-produced inscriptions and sacrifice in front of Holy Trees – implying the use of Indus inscriptions in some type of communal indoctrination.
6) Sacrificial tithe system? – Possible functions of mass-produced miniature steatite tablets and one class of molded terra-cotta and faience inscriptions.
7) High levels of standardization – in both inscription types and myths – imply significant political integration, at least in the mature Indus period (ca. 2200-1900 BCE).
8) We find surprisingly few intrusive myths or iconography in most periods, and then many (reflecting Central Asian/BMAC influences) just before the Indus symbol system disappeared.

The authors have managed to acquire a semblance of scientific enquiry and some grace, by claiming that their assertions are falsifiable under the five scenarios listed below, though they believe that the chances of such things happening is exceedingly rare.

1) If remnants were discovered of an Indus inscription on any medium, even if imperfectly preserved, that contained clear evidence that the original contained several hundred signs.
2) If any Indus inscription carrying at least 50 symbols were found that contained unambiguous evidence of the random-looking types of sign duplications typical of ancient scripts.
3) If any bilingual inscription were discovered that carried a minimum of 30 or so Indus symbols juxtaposed with a comparable number of signs in a previously deciphered script.
4) If a clear set of rules were published that allowed any researcher, besides the original proposer of those rules, to decipher a significantly large body of Indus inscriptions using phonetic, syntactic, and semantic principles of no greater number or complexity than those needed to interpret already deciphered scripts.
5) If a ‘lexical list’ were discovered that arranged a significantly large number of Indus signs in ways similar to those found in Near Eastern school texts.

The only advantage that can be pointed out is the very good introduction given by Sunil Roy and the impressively huge list of references at the end of each paper. The good number of images of Indus seals and signs are also to be mentioned to do justice to the authors.

On the other hand, there are far too many problems to be noticed. The book is full of spelling and syntactical errors, giving us the suspicion that it is not proof-read at any stage of the publication. The book resembles a research paper more than a proper title with the general reader in mind. The language is terse and hard to follow. Only a historian of no mean merit can extract something worthwhile or enjoy reading this book. The book is printed in monochrome, thus cancelling the worthiness of colour charts which show legends as constituting different colours.

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 1 Star

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Café Europa – Life After Communism















Title: Café Europa – Life After Communism
Author: Slavenka Drakulic
Publisher: Abacus 2008 (First published 1996)
ISBN: 978-0-349-10729-5
Pages: 213

Slavenka Drakulic is a Croatian writer and journalist born in 1949, who writes novels and non-fiction books. Her works are translated into many languages. As she had lived most of her life under a totalitarian communist regime, most of her works are based on the theme, as her non-fiction title How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed duly attests. Café Europa is a collection of tales – true experiences, if you will – which brings out the differences existing at every conceivable level, be it cultural, social, economic or political between the East and West Europeans. She brings out in stark detail how much the erstwhile communist nations have to move forward to be truly assimilated in a united Europe in a seamless way. The author has travelled extensively in other countries and her first-hand knowledge in assessing the conditions peculiar to her own and foreign nations are succinctly put in this collection of 24 chapters ranging on a diverse assortment of subjects.

The people in eastern Europe are eager to be reckoned as true Europeans and this is made evident by the naming of a lot of public places like restaurants and pubs with western-sounding appellations. The title of the book, Café Europa is the name of a pub in Croatia which tries to emit an eponymous outfit in Vienna. However much they try, there is an invisible wall between the east and the west. This is amply made clear by the attitude of border guards on western nations who treat the easterners with suspicion mixed with a bit of hostility. The author herself was subjected to body checks while her Swedish husband could easily pass through without even so much as waving his passport! Though bitten by the travel bug, she has not visited Russia so far because of the unpleasantness it might provoke as her own country, the erstwhile Yugoslavia was literally ruled by the Russians till Tito separated from them. The grinding of lives under the communist yoke was more prominent in Russia.

The author has extensively travelled in the east European states and her writings concern each and every one of them except perhaps, Poland and the three Baltic states. The dictatorial communist regime under Nikolae Ceceauscu in Romania caused mass migration of peasants into cities under the guise of rapid industrialization. The urban infrastructure was pathetic in relation to transport, accommodation and hygiene, with the resulting disasters to people destined to live in them. The state of affairs was complicated by the union of peculiarities like low wages, impossibility to fire lazy workers and the collective ownership of property. In fact, what the communists shared was poverty and not property. There were no jobs in the east to speak of, and the Yugoslavians were better off than others, as Tito made it a point to open up his country a bit after breaking off with the Soviets. They were allowed to travel to western countries, especially Germany and send the money back home.

Things have changed since the collapse of communist regimes, with many industries now privatized. Even though the ownership has changed, the attitude of workers is still the same, who still refuse even to smile at the guests in a hotel or shop. Reared in an ideology which viewed work as the exploitation of labour by the capitalists, it is no wonder the attitude is hard to change. Also any semblance to smiling while at work was frowned upon by the party commissars. Smiling is a sign of happiness and why one should be happy, when everyone was poor? Foreign tourists are fleeced everywhere in eastern Europe and people go by the You Have, I Need motto. Hotel  and taxi rates are invariably double for the westerners. The people don’t understand the concept of value for money, the work they have to perform to earn the cash they extort from the tourists or employers coming from the west. This may be a new turn in the life of the people as the communist regimes were nothing more than forced labour camps.

The eastern Europeans are now more insecure as the social security measures guaranteed by the fallen governments were effective, however meagre. They had pensions, medical care including dental which even some of the western democracies didn’t have. Due to this precarious condition people are unwilling to spend too much on articles as the author says that her favourite was clearance sale. The new generation is however, free from this affliction. The uniformed class always demonstrated undue power in the running of the country as they were the defenders of communism against their own citizens. Even in the post-communist era, matters are little changed. Now the surge of nationalism in these countries has wreaked havoc in the form of several internal battles between nationalities and religions.

Communism was a continuation of the pre-existing despotic monarchies who had no interest in developing the political process in the kingdom. Such a thing was unheard of under the communists. As a result, people are ignorant of their rights and duties which are exploited by the ruling classes. After the fall of communists, instead of nourishing democratic institutions, a large section of the society is only interested in bringing the exiled monarchs back to give the reins of power to them in a platter, as if they are afraid to run the show by themselves. Attempts to erase the totalitarian past are taking on ridiculous dimensions in the form of renaming streets, squares, parks and even destroying the graves of former leaders. Tito is now practically forgotten and Nazi puppets like Ante Pavelic, who was the head of the German puppet state of Croatia during 1941-45 is resurrected back to life. This is wrong as the people are denied their history which was just what the communists did too. Jasenovac, the Croatian concentration camp in which 17,000 Jews perished during World War II, is simply pushed under the carpet in an attempt to negate history.

The author’s style is simply superb and graceful. We feel the sadness prevailing throughout the text get out of the pages and enter our hearts. The cast of characters and incidents show the trademarks of an accomplished novelist. We Indians identify many similarities between those states and our own country. Communism has created more wounds in our industrial psyche than it did in the former communist countries, as they are lucky enough to cast them out, while our polity is replete with them in the guise of intelligentsia, trade unionists, human rights activists and pseudo-secularists.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Atom and the Apple



Title: The Atom and the Apple – Twelve Tales From Contemporary Physics
Author: Sebastien Balibar
Publisher: Princeton University Press 2008 (First published 2005)
ISBN: 978-0-691-13108-5
Pages: 178

Sebastien Balibar is a leading researcher and popularizer of science in France. This book is a translation of his French work. It includes twelve chapters based on the varied aspects of scientific research, particularly on physics. Every chapter begins with a personal experience of the author in a related incident, rooting on which the narrative of the chapter, or tale as he says, is developed. All issues discussed are having due significance in the present world, like energy crisis, global warming, present trends in cosmology and such like.

The author begins with Olbers’ paradox which suggested in the 19th century that the night sky should not be black if the number of stars are infinite or if the universe existed for an infinite time. The logical problem confused even the most brilliant minds of the time and the collective opinion was that the stars are not infinite and the age of the universe is fixed. After a clear enunciation of the idea, recent trends in cosmological research is discussed in good detail.

Symmetry is having profound influence in science. Most of the unifications were based on the symmetries presented in the theories. Even life forms respect symmetry in curious ways. The complex organic molecules which makes aminoacids are displaying right-handedness in the polarisation of light. The same substances, when synthesized in vitro, are a mixture of right- and left-handedness. This chirality does not make them differ in any of the properties as the molecules and the bonds which make the substances are exactly the same. Such a symmetry exists between matter and antimatter, but the universe as we see it are dominated by matter. The symmetry violation between these two forms are thought to have occurred right after the big bang, resulting in a slight preference to matter, which predominated over the other form over time.

Radioactivity warms up the interior core of earth. Attempts of the press to sensationalize information by bringing out the units of radioactivity in alarming detail is derided and a good description of the early history of earth is given. For life to be feasible on exoplanets (planets in stellar systems outside the solar system), the atmospheric conditions would have to be practically the same as that of earth. Here the author seems to be too much conditioned to expect the life forms as we know it. The universe is too complex and vast and we have to anticipate life in very much unfamiliar ways. An interesting but unrelated book on life forms totally strange to us is Life As We Do Not Know It by Peter Ward. (Reviewed earlier in this blog).

Bose-Einstein condensate is a topic on quantum mechanics and we would not expect it to show itself on a book of this nature. However, a reasonably good information is supplied. The theory was verified in 1995 and the scientists received the Nobel in 2001. When atoms are cooled down very nearly to absolute zero, the thermal movements of its molecules slow down and atoms move to a single quantum state and acts as a coherent wave. Even though the description was reader friendly, this chapter was somewhat heavy to get through.

Questions may arise as to what constitutes quantum properties, whether a table obeys quantum laws. Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment on the cat is a familiar example, in which the life of a caged cat was dependent on the purely quantum outcome of the disintegration of a radioactive nucleus. Schrodinger then suggested that the cat may be thought to be dead and alive at the same time, even though what he had in mind was bringing into focus the seemingly illogical aspects of quantum mechanics of his rival, Heisenberg. The explanation given by Balibar is clear and convincing. Cat is classical while particle is quantum. Classical objects are non-coherent which interacts with the macroscopic world and quantum parameters cannot be ascribed to them. Hence, the cat experiment is not a valid one on theory. The interference pattern observed when light channelled through two slits cannot be observed if ordinary lamps are used instead of coherent beams like laser. This explains why the trials of several amateurs (myself included) failed to demonstrate the interference pattern and which was attributed to the crudeness of the experimental setup until now!

After all these topics of general interest, Balibar brings out his own topics of research and how far he has advanced in these. Helium exhibits a property called ‘superfluidity’ below a temperature named Lambda point. The term ‘superfluidity’ was coined by the noted Russian scientist Kapitza and further developed by another Russian, Landau. The author’s investigations are on the crystallization of solid helium and he claims that Jack Allen and Fritz London, though they had produced insightful work, are not honoured in the way it deserved. The discontinuous state change of a material, like freezing of boiling of water is not fully understood. It is a bit ironic that when the search for a unified theory of everything is going on, such commonplace yet complex phenomena are sidelined. Another case in point is the chaotic flow of fluids. In any scientific endeavour, the triad of observation, modelling and verification is the framework of science.

The ‘Butterfly effect’ is very familiar term associated with weather forecasting, which gets its name from a talk given by the meterologist Edward Lorenz in Washington in 1972: “Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” There he emphasized that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in some location was more or less enough to change the subsequent evolution of the whole atmosphere completely, so great is its sensitivity to initial conditions (p.124). So great is the dependence of a chaotic system on its initial conditions. This chaotic nature prevents prediction of weather by more than two weeks. The author asserts that by however much our computing power is increased, or the parameters are accurately measured, the prediction will be impossible on a time frame exceeding two weeks. However, these chaotic systems obey deterministic laws like Navier Stokes Law for hydrodynamics.

The Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci series finds prominent place in the arrangement of many biological systems, the florets of sun flower being one among them. The physical processes, the ‘motivation’ for the objects to obey such mathematical rules are brought out in clear detail. The author could have gone a little bit deeper into the topic.

The total power consumption in 2000 was 14,000 GW for 6 billion inhabitants, or about 2kW per person. There were regional variations, with 11 kW in U.S., 5 kW in France and much less than 1 kW in the developing world. Of this, about 32% comes from oil, 26% from coal, and 19% from gas, which adds up to 77% from non-renewable fossil fuels. The remaining comes from 5% nuclear, 6% hydroelectric, 10% from biomass like wood, and only 1 or 2% from other kinds of energy which are renewable. Carbon dioxide emission is increasing due to this increased consumption of fossil fuels. Global temperatures may go up by about 3 deg C if the CO2 emission is not controlled. This may not seem much, but we must keep in mind that about 20,000 years ago, when the world’s average temperature was less than present day’s standard by about 6 deg C, most of the northern parts of Europe and America was under ice sheets 2 to 3 km thick! We must reduce the contribution of fossil fuels from 77% to 20% by 2050. Nuclear energy, though a producer of dangerous waste, is one of the sure bets for this target. Plutonium 239, with a half-life of 24,000 years is the most hazardous waste material from nuclear plants. Fast breeder reactor technology should catch up fast so that this material can be reused in reactors itself. The main drawback of such a technology is the extensive cooling arrangements required. Nuclear fusion is touted as a perennial source of energy, but the engineering difficulties are not going to be solved in a foreseeable future. In ordinary reactors, neutrons are emitted with an energy of 1 MeV, but in fusion reactors, the energy is of the order of 14 MeV and no steel is able to withstand such a tremendous onslaught. Hydro, solar and wind energy also should be explored and used. The theoretical maximum output of a solar cell is 25% and the best converters available has an efficiency of 12% only.

In the final chapter, the author criticises the protective attitude shown by French politicians towards the French language. They have made it mandatory by a law called Toubon’s Law that any seminar, publication, material published in France and subsidised by the state should contain provisions for distributing the material translated in French. This causes a great burden on the resources of the institutes and such short-sighted attitudes won’t help promote scientific research in France. The author acknowledges that the language of international science is now English and in countries like Italy, Finland and Holland, higher education is now only in English, even though he thinks such a measure is a bit premature in France.

Sebastien Balibar is endowed with a great amount of French patriotism, which is well expected and displayed by French authors. He calls the well known Doppler effect, Doppler-Fizeau effect, in honour of the French astronomer Armand Fizeau who found a way of measuring a star’s speed from its spectrum. In addition to the scientists, the topics mentioned are also heavily flavoured with the nationalistic ingredient. Moreover, the author’s own researches into the crystallization of super cooled helium is given undue importance judged from its applicability or relevance to lay readers.

The author seems to have an aversion for space travel. Robots are the best suited for space exploration and the immense expenses for the International Space Station (ISS) is wasted, according to him. This may seem irrational to us, as the experiences of humans in space is very valuable for studying astronomical objects. Balibar ends with an afterword which takes a dig at Stephen Hawking, for the incomprehensible subjects he mentions in his public speeches. The author and Hawking were invited as speakers in the Loeb lecture series of 1999. Hawking’s lecture was addressed to a full house and had to be repeated with paid tickets in a larger hall, the next day. But Hawking’s lecture was full of hard to understand topics which the audience didn’t seem to mind, whereas the author’s simple yet elegant lecture was attended by a maximum of hundred people! The criticism seemed to be unwarranted and out of place.

The book is very good for any class of readers. The author’s treatment of the concepts is flexible and seamless. If you want to find an easy way to tell a difficult scientific concept, look at Balibar for guidance. The ease with which his transitions are made from his own experiences to the issue on debate is enviable.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Beyond Einstein

















Title: Beyond Einstein
Author: Michio Kaku, Jennifer Thompson
Publisher: Oxford University Press 2010 (First published 1987)
ISBN: 978-0-19-286196-2
Pages: 206

A best seller from the leading popularizer of science. Himself being a player in the scientific arena, Kaku’s comments carry weight due to the sharp insight and incisive reasoning that goes behind every one of his works. This book is also not much different. The quest for a unified theory of everything is at the centre-stage of this work. Albert Einstein carried on a futile quest for finding the elusive unified theory which would combine all the four fundamental forces of nature. Though touted as the greatest genius ever lived, Einstein worked in isolation in the latter part of his career and was against the application of quantum mechanics in any sphere of physics. Partly due to these factors, he failed miserably to produce the theory which would explain everything. Kaku describes the work done by other scientists in this field and how much they had moved beyond Einstein. The author was instrumental in some way in the research on superstrings, which is considered to be the most viable (so far) theory of the universe and promotes it in great detail.

Kaku was attracted to science with awe to the great scientist, Albert Einstein. When he died, he was in the search for the unified theory and this impressed the young author so much that he himself wanted to plunge into the arena which baffled even the great intellect like Einstein. Superstring theory unites all forces in nature, but the enormous energy needed to test its postulates prevents us from testing it in the particle accelerators in the world. The Superconducting Super Collider, which was proposed but rejected in the U.S would have tested some aspects of it, but in the present circumstances only the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN, Geneva can come anywhere close to it.

History of unification of forces begins the Isaac Newton. The common belief during the 17th century was that celestial and terrestrial objects were obeying different laws, with the celestial objects being perfect in every way. Newton proposed the theory of Gravitation which didn’t differentiate between the position of objects in describing how a force acted between them. No matter what object you are interested in, say, the sun, mars, jupiter, an apple or another human being, all are acted upon by the same force which directly depended on the mass of each object and the square of the distance between them. This was the first unification which combined the celestial and terrestrial objects. The next step came only in 1860, when James Clerk Maxwell proposed his theory of electromagnetism, which showed that electricity and magnetism and different aspects of the same force. As a byproduct, he also found that light is also an electromagnetic wave and its velocity is constant. This theory was the inspiration behind Einstein’s Special theory of relativity published in 1905. He came out with his general theory of relativity in 1915, combining gravity to it. The general theory unified the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time and put forward the idea of space-time. Einstein’s fecundity seems to end with the general theory as the next three decades were fruitless. Until then, he was thinking in terms of abstract mental pictures, but the search for unified theory put him in the wild path of exotic mathematics which finally came to nothing.

Quantum Mechanics developed in the 20th century with pioneering works of Verner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger. Though the theory is so weird that Niels Bohr once remarked that if anyone was not shocked by quantum mechanics, he hasn’t understood it, no experiment has repudiated it so far. Not only that most of the modern equipments in the electronics and computer fields are the products of quantum mechanics. Computers, lasers, television, medical equipment, the list is endless. However, physicists are unanimous in declaring that the theory is as yet incomplete. It breaks down when the speed of electrons approach the speed of light, that is, relativistic velocities. Quantum field theory combined quantum mechanics with electromagnetism, but was riddled with infinities which came out as the result of mathematical operations on the equations. Richard Feynman proposed Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) to combine these. Electroweak theory was developed by Weinberg, Glashow and Salam which unified electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. Attempts to integrate this framework with the strong force resulted in more understanding of it as the researches of Murray Gell-Mann came out with quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which postulated that quarks constitute protons and neutrons and gluons were the particles through which the strong force is effected.

The Standard Model of particle physics consists of 36 quarks. The heaviest quark was termed ‘top quark’ and was observed in particle experiments in 1994. This variety tells us that a deeper level of unification is possible at which the number of particles are lesser. We know that it cannot be the final theory because:

1. It has such a bizarre collection of quarks, leptons, gluons and W, Z bosons
2. It has exactly three generations, in both the quark and lepton sector, which are indistinguishable (except for their masses)
3. It has nineteen arbitrary parameters, including the mass of the leptons, the mass of the W and Z particles, the relative strength of the strong and weak interactions, and so on. (p.76)

Grand Unified Theory (GUT) integrated the electro-weak theory and the strong force. Though elegant, the theory was still riddled with arbitrary constants.

In 1968, Gabriele Veneziano and Mahiko Suzuki found the relationship behind the strong interaction in a formula developed by Euler in the 18th century. The hypotheses was further improved by John Schwarz, Andre Neveu and Pierre Ramond and came to be known as superstring theory in 1970. The theory flew against commonsense as it required ten dimensions to operate as compared to the four familiar dimensions of spacetime. Everyone thought that it was nothing more than a mathematical curiosity and it was promptly abandoned around 1974. The principle was enunciated as a solution to the strong force, but gravitons and photons appeared in it. In 1976, Joel Scherk and John Schwarz suggested that the theory be reinterpreted as the universal theory of everything. Such arbitrary propositions met with strong skepticism. In 1984, Michael Green and John Schwarz found superstring theory possess enough symmetries to ban all anomalies. This development provided a facelift for the theory.

Superstring theory considers the Big Bang as the byproduct of a much stronger explosion in which a pre-existing ten-dimensional universe broke into a four-dimensional one familiar to us. All systems tend to be in a low energy state like water which flows to the lowest level at which it is stable. However, water can be made to stay at a level at which the energy is not the lowest, for example, in dams. Such states are called ‘false vacuum’ and the system rushes to its true low-energy state whenever it gets a chance. Perhaps, the ten-dimensional word might have been in a false vacuum which spontaneously turned into a 4-dimensional one which is having lower energies.

The book also explains state of the art concepts like dark matter and how it was confirmed through the painstaking cosmic observations by Vera Rubin. Cosmic strings are not related to superstrings, but scientists believe that gigantic cosmic strings stretching across millions of light-years formed immediately after the Big Bang. These cosmic string create ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves. Experiments are in full swing to detect these waves which was one of the predictions of general relativity.

The book is an essential ingredient in the book shelf of a science enthusiast. The description is very lucid and clear. A lot of diagrams are included which brings out the concepts in pictorial detail. Even readers who have only a glancing familiarity with scientific concepts can enjoy the work. The author’s gentle admonition of the western way of thinking makes interesting reading, “This peculiar hostility (to new ideas from junior colleagues) comes from the unconscious tendency of most physicists who suffer from the mechanistic process of thinking, often found among physicists in the West, which tries to understand the inner workings of an object by examining the mechanical motions of its individual parts. Although this thinking has produced undeniable success in isolating the laws of particular domains, it blinds one from seeing the overall picture and noticing larger patterns” (p.106). There was also one quote from Stephen Hawking arresting our attention, “When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything that one does have”. This was when the gifted scientist was denied his freedom of movement by the motor neuron disease.

The book is however marred by the salesman’s tone’ expressed by Kaku in promoting the string theory. He brings it up every now and then, when describing the drawbacks of previous theories and promptly declares that it is taken care of in string theory. The early research in strings was dominated by Japanese scientists and one may also wonder whether there is indeed a patriotic tinge to the passionate arugments of the author to prop up the theory. The glorification of lesser known scientists like Mahiko Suzuki, Nambu, Yukawa, Bunji Sakita etc seems out of place. Another drawback is that the book is outdated as the latest concepts described in it are of 1995. A lot of research and observations were made thereafter but the book fails to incorporate them. For example, the observation that the expansion rate of the universe is slowing down prompted scientists to came out with the explanation that 73% of the universe is in the form of dark energy, 23% as dark matter and 4% as ordinary matter. Dark energy is not even mentioned in the book and dark matter is stated to compose about 90% of the universe. This reduces the suitability of the book of matters of recent origin.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star