Kennewick Man's bones. [National Park Service]This is the Dogpile search for "archaeology", which we may start using all the time.
Posted on 11/02/2012 3:13:21 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The discovery of Kennewick Man, the name given to the 9,200 year-old skeleton unearthed in southern Washington nearly a decade ago, has unearthed plenty of questions among anthropologists and tribal members about what Kennewick Man's life might have been like. To Burke Museum anthropological archaeologist Peter Lape though, the biggest question at hand is whether peer review, a time-honored scientific practice, is being ignored by leading forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley, whose team has been the only one allowed to study Kennewick Man's bones since they were discovered in the mid-90s.
Lape, the curator of achaeology at the Burke Museum and an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Washington, is unhappy with this scenario. He believes that many facets of Owsley's team's conclusions -- such as the isotope results to speculate on Kennewick Man's diet and the potential elasticity of a human skull -- stem from tricky aspects of forensic anthropology and he's bothered by the fact that no one outside of Owsley's team has had a chance to scrutinize the Smithonsian's data to see how the team reached its conclusions...
Many of the findings in question were made public in early October, when Owsley, a leading forensic anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institute, briefed Mid-Columbia tribes and the public in central Washington about the results of six years spent studying the 9,200-year-old Kennewick Man...
What bothers Lape though is the absence of peer-reviewed articles published prior to Owsley unveiling the bones' secrets. Standard procedure in the academic world is for scientists to submit articles to scholarly journals, have other experts review the articles prior to publication, and then have experts debate results after publication. While Owsley has consulted extensively with his group of experts, he has yet to publish a scholarly article on Kennewick Man...
(Excerpt) Read more at crosscut.com ...
Kennewick Man's bones. [National Park Service]This is the Dogpile search for "archaeology", which we may start using all the time.
Until peer review takes place, this remains a potential hoax. No more.
What does the Smithsonian think they’re doing?
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Jean-Luc Picard ping. |
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It isn’t a potential hoax.
The Smithsonian is merely complying with the law (in this case NAGPRA, which abbreviation surprisingly isn’t the same thing as NAMBLA, despite the sodomizing that results from both) and the court decisions. I applaud this attempt to get more study done — although I’m not optimistic that it will work.
Have they admitted that he was caucasian, yet?
I’m sure the study will conclude this man was the first to cause AGW.
My understanding is this fellow had those definitive extra roots.
50 million modern Japanese have them as well, and so do the Ainu up the coast of East Asia, and a bunch of Chinese in the middle of the country.
Caucasions don't have the extra roots.
Didn’t the Clinton administration have the site of the find destroyed, and trees planted to grow into it?
“this remains a potential hoax”
Which “this”?
The dating of the bones?
The ethnic origins?
The simple fact is that the remains are human remains, that are not typical of native American Indians.
I'd cut these folks some slack on the peer review front considering the fight that has gone on and is still continuing with the Indians trying to obtain physical contol of the bones and suppress any scientific information obtained from them.
I find the Windover Site in Florida just as fascinating. I'm reading a book ,DNA USA, by Bryan Sykes and he says the Windover DNA is haplogroup X, the European variety.
Not if it upsets the Politically Correct Applecart.
"The oldest human remains found in the Americas were recently "discovered" in the storeroom of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. Found in central Mexico in 1959, the five skulls were radiocarbon dated by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Mexico and found to be 13,000 years old. They pre-date the Clovis culture by a couple thousand years, adding to the growing evidence against the Clovis-first model for the first peopling of the Americas."
"Of additional significance is the shape of the skulls, which are described as long and narrow, very unlike those of modern Native Americans."
There were people already here when the people we identify today as Native Americans arrived.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is the pendulum swing from having g-g-granddad's bones being dug up and taken to distant museum for study. The fact that the descendants may not have approved made no never mind to these scientists. This law, passed in 1990, permits the local American Aboriginal tribes to repatriate (reclaim) not only the human remains, but also all cultural artifacts taken from their areas.
Logical problems with this law, like many other laws, assumes a static view of these tribal localities which may or may not be accurate. In this case, with the age of the Kennewick Man, it becomes even more problematical. The fact that the discovery site has been archeologically destroyed, at the behest of the local tribal councils, is indeed a crime against science.
An excellent example of Newton's 3rd Law of action and reaction in the course of human interactions. The former crime of scientific 'body-stealing' has engendered a reaction resulting in the needless destruction of data.
With no peer review they’re still just bones.
I’m really suprised at you guys.
Martian Methane Reveals the Red Planet is not a Dead
Mars today is a world of cold and lonely deserts, apparently without life of any kind, at least on the surface. Worse still, it looks like Mars has been cold and dry for billions of years, with an atmosphere so thin, any liquid water on the surface quickly boils away while the sun’s ultraviolet radiation scorches the ground.
But there is evidence of a warmer and wetter past — features resembling dry riverbeds and minerals that form in the presence of water indicate water once flowed through Martian sands. Since liquid water is required for all known forms of life, scientists wonder if life could have risen on Mars, and if it did, what became of it as the Martian climate changed.
New research reveals there is hope for Mars yet. The first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars indicates the planet is still alive, in either a biologic or geologic sense, according to a team of NASA and university scientists.
“Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,” said Dr. Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif.”
Scientists don’t yet know enough to say with certainty what the source of the Martian methane is, but this artist’s concept depicts a possibility. In this illustration, subsurface water, carbon dioxide and the planet’s internal heat combine to release methane. Although we don’t have evidence on Mars of active volcanoes today, ancient methane trapped in ice “cages” might now be released. Credit: NASA/Susan Twardy
> Larger image Methane — four atoms of hydrogen bound to a carbon atom — is the main component of natural gas on Earth. It’s of interest to astrobiologists because organisms release much of Earth’s methane as they digest nutrients. However, other purely geological processes, like oxidation of iron, also release methane. “Right now, we don’t have enough information to tell if biology or geology — or both — is producing the methane on Mars,” said Mumma. “But it does tell us that the planet is still alive, at least in a geologic sense. It’s as if Mars is challenging us, saying, hey, find out what this means.” Mumma is lead author of a paper on this research appearing in Science Express Jan. 15.
If microscopic Martian life is producing the methane, it likely resides far below the surface, where it’s still warm enough for liquid water to exist. Liquid water, as well as energy sources and a supply of carbon, are necessary for all known forms of life.
“On Earth, microorganisms thrive 2 to 3 kilometers (about 1.2 to 1.9 miles) beneath the Witwatersrand basin of South Africa, where natural radioactivity splits water molecules into molecular hydrogen (H2) and oxygen. The organisms use the hydrogen for energy. It might be possible for similar organisms to survive for billions of years below the permafrost layer on Mars, where water is liquid, radiation supplies energy, and carbon dioxide provides carbon,” said Mumma.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/marsmethane.html
THREAD HIJACKER!!! Oh, sorry.
:’)
Looks like gleeaikin already pinged ya over to the spot.
The idea of a wetter past for Mars remains wishful thinking. The problem is, Mars’ very, very short periods of transitory liquid water have never been planet-wide.
I have extra roots on my molars. Discovered this when my dentist attempted to do a root canal. I am of western European ancestry - English, scots-Irsih, Welsh, German.
Part of that is a consequence of human movements back and forth during the last 75,000 years ~ some of it is much more recent ~ the Mongols got around, and so did Portuguese sailers.
(...asked the blue eyed, once blonde, American of German decent with extra roots)
They are commonly found among the jomon, emeshi, samurai and ainu ~ plus some populations here and there in china.
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