Quark liberation and coalescence at CERN SPS

The mischievous linear coalescence approach to hadronization of quark matter is shown to violate strangeness conservation in strong interactions. The simplest correct quark counting is shown to coincide with the non-linear algebraic coalescence rehadronization model, ALCOR. The non-linearity of the ALCOR model is shown to cancel from its simple predictions for the relative yields of (multi-)strange baryons. We prove, model independently, that quark degrees of freedom are liberated before hadron formation in 158 AGeV central Pb + Pb collisions at CERN SPS.