Senate Bill Could Untie Kennewick Man Bones

Tricity Herald ^ | 10-4-2007 | Annette Cary

[SunkenCiv]

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[Maynerd]

Spirit Cave Man is the spitting image of Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart aka Jean Luc Picard of Star Trek fame.

[fish hawk]

Gee, to know that, you must be pretty old. Like several thousands. Of course this could be your “theory”, but then, you should present it as such.

[marsh2]

These relics are the history of all humanity. They should be available for all of us to learn to understand the evolution of humanoids and migration pattern of early man. They are our roots and should not be made inaccessible by relegating them to one tribe to which no direct lineage can be shown.

[Salamander]

“They don’t want you to know that they weren’t here first.”

They don’t want to lose all those tax-free casinos and tobacco franchise “reparations”, either.

Why do we even bother to seek “truth” any more?

Inevitably, somebody, somewhere who is “offended” by it will just hire lawyers to bury it.

More Blue Oyster Cult lyrics:

"I'm after rebellion; I'll settle for lies."

Pffffft.

[Varda]

Personally I think your theory that Native Americans aren’t related to the First Americans to be pretty far fetched (we are all still genetically related to ancestors whose morphology we don’t share) . However NAGPRA requires a direct cultural affiliation if you can’t prove a biological one. Changing that would be a racist move on the governments part and a disaster for real research.

[norton]

Local government turned my Great Grandfather’s sacred Irish grave site into a helicopter pad - damn fool should have stayed on Cherokee land.

[ZULU]

They or they may not be, but trying them to archaic pre-Columbian fossils is totally absurd. This is just another example of the melt-down of western civilization in the face of radical nativist types whose main agenda is not to protect their genuine immediate tribal ancestors, but to make a political statement.

Too bad we have so many gutless harlots in Congress but then most of them are Dems or RINOS so what can we expect.

[colorado tanker]

This is an idea so stupid, so anti-science and so anti-intellectual, but oh so politically correct, that it sounds like something Ward Churchill would support. Under the definition of this bill, even his whitebread bones could qualify as "native American" if they were old enough.

[49th]

On the one hand, it’s not difficult to understand the Native’s position on this issue, especially when one considers their religious beliefs regarding ancestors and how devastating it must be to know that, for all intents and purposes, their culture has been eradicated. An urge to cling to whatever they have left is entirely understandable, I’m sure most Americans would be livid at the idea of digging up Arlington Cemetery at any point in the future.

On the other hand, the advancement of scientific knowledge about the paleo-history of this continent is a good and worthy goal.

Ideally one would like to see a compromise situation whereby bones discovered would be paid whatever respects a tribe feels necessary, and then ‘loaned’ to an institution for study.

Also, I’m confused about how some people seem to feel that the fact that those people we call ‘Native Americans’ may not have been the first people here somehow lessens the tragedy of what happened to them.

[Docbarleypop]

I am so embarrassed that there is a picture of me getting my hand shaked by D.A. Dorgan when i was a teen.

[longtermmemmory]

This is PURE PAYOLA.

The Indians do not want to admit that their “claims” are tenuous. Since it now can be PROVEN the indians were not alone or here first then it is a threat to their casinos.

[ken21]

the united states is stuck on

stupid.

[Coyoteman]

The Indians do not want to admit that their “claims” are tenuous. Since it now can be PROVEN the indians were not alone or here first then it is a threat to their casinos.

I think I have to disagree with you on some of the science part of your post.

One of the oldest dated, and as far as I know, the oldest specimen to provide mtDNA from the New World is the individual from On Your Knees Cave in southern Alaska.

That find has been dated, I believe reliably, to about 10,300 years ago.

And the mtDNA of this individual has been found in 47 living individuals stretching from California to the tip of South America.

This suggests that, even though the earliest Americans may have been a different genotype, their descendants are clearly found throughout the Americas.

Here is a good link explaining a lot of the findings: Long in the tooth: Dental DNA reveals our ancient roots.

Since this two-year-old newspaper article, a journal article detailing the find has been peer-reviewed and published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132(4):605-621.

Here are the details:

Genetic analysis of early holocene skeletal remains from Alaska and its implications for the settlement of the Americas, by Brian M. Kemp et al.

Abstract

Mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA were analyzed from 10,300-year-old human remains excavated from On Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska (Site 49-PET-408). This individual's mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) represents the founder haplotype of an additional subhaplogroup of haplogroup D that was brought to the Americas, demonstrating that widely held assumptions about the genetic composition of the earliest Americans are incorrect. The amount of diversity that has accumulated in the subhaplogroup over the past 10,300 years suggests that previous calibrations of the mtDNA clock may have underestimated the rate of molecular evolution. If substantiated, the dates of events based on these previous estimates are too old, which may explain the discordance between inferences based on genetic and archaeological evidence regarding the timing of the settlement of the Americas. In addition, this individual's Y-chromosome belongs to haplogroup Q-M3*, placing a minimum date of 10,300 years ago for the emergence of this haplogroup.