Posted on 08/10/2004 10:56:41 AM PDT by blam
Scientists wait to examine Kennewick Man
August 08 2004 at 04:58PM
By Tomas Alex Tizon
For a few days last week, the top forensic anthropologists in the United States thought they were finally going to get their chance to study Kennewick Man.
The eight-year legal battle over the 9 300-year-old bones, one of the oldest skeletons found in North America, appeared finished after five northwest Indian tribes decided not to pursue their case to the US supreme court. The tribes claimed that Kennewick Man was an ancestor and should not be desecrated by scientific study.
Two courts ruled in favour of the eight plaintiff scientists who believe the bones, discovered in 1996 along the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, could yield insights on the earliest inhabitants of the Americas. The skeleton, in one preliminary study, was found to have some Caucasian features, suggesting that groups other than Asians may have migrated to the continents thousands of years ago.
But soon after the scientists' apparent victory, a new legal obstacle emerged late last week, this time from the federal government. The US army's engineers corps, which has custody of the skeleton and which sided early on with the tribes, has objected to so many aspects of the scientists' study plan that a new round of litigation is probable, according to Alan Schneider, the scientists' attorney.
The earlier court battles focused on whether Kennewick Man should be subjected to scientific study. The new legal battle will be about how his bones will be studied.
Schneider predicts that he will have to go to court to compel the government to hand over the skeleton. "That seems to be the direction we're heading."
Jennifer Richman, an attorney for the engineers' corps, would say only that the scientists' plan was "subject to reasonable terms and conditions".
"We are trying to work it out," she said.
The tribes also wanted to have a say in how the bones were studied, hoping to minimise the "destruction of tissue" and the "desecration of the remains", said Debra Croswell, a spokesperson for the Umatilla Tribe in northeastern Oregon.
The tribes relied on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, intended to protect tribal burials, to claim Kennewick Man so that, in Croswell's words, "the remains could be honoured and put back in the ground where they belong".
But a district court in Portland and later a federal appellate court said the tribes failed to prove an ancestral link to the skeleton.
Kennewick Man, made up of more than 350 bones, is being kept at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle.
Scientists believe the bones belonged to a man who stood about 1,75m, suffered a severe spear wound to his hip, and was 40 to 50 years old when he died.
The man, according to one reconstruction, had more angular facial features than those typically associated with American Indians. The skull resembled those of Polynesians or the Ainu, the original inhabitants of Japan, whose features were more Caucasoid, scientists say.
The discovery caused a stir not just among tribes, whose identity as the continents' "original" inhabitants seemed jeopardised, but also among scientists whose long-standing theory on how the Americas were populated was turned on its head.
As recently as the mid-1990s, the prevailing theory was that North and South America were first populated by people from the Asian interior who crossed the Bering land bridge about 11 000 years ago.
Kennewick Man and the recent discoveries of ancient skeletons in South America seem to suggest that the continents were peopled by several waves of early migrants who used different routes.
George Gill, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Wyoming and one of the plaintiffs in the Kennewick Man case, said evidence indicated that seafaring people from southeast Asia or Polynesia could have reached the Americas by travelling along the Pacific Rim, landing somewhere in what is now South America. He said an ancient European people could also have reached the northeast corner of North America.
Wasn't one of these inconvenient fossil-finds buried by the Army Corp of Engineers under about 100 million tons of rocks? I thought that was Kennewick.
Must be Democrats, with all this PC silliness!
The skeleton was preserved but the site was buried.
"George Gill, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Wyoming and one of the plaintiffs in the Kennewick Man case, said evidence indicated that seafaring people from southeast Asia or Polynesia could have reached the Americas by travelling along the Pacific Rim, landing somewhere in what is now South America."
Aku Aku?
The Constitution should not be amended, not even for this.
Clinton holdovers are everywhere.
What do these people have to fear? A clear and open investigation of these issues would be neat, no more tribal lore or Clovis suppositions, science on the table.
Clearly we need to rethink the status of the original inhabitants of this continent and the great injustice that they suffered.
As a direct descendent of Kennewick Man, I am not asking for much in the way of reparations, just a casino and tax free smokes.
"The discovery caused a stir not just among tribes, whose identity as the continents' "original" inhabitants seemed jeopardised, but also among scientists whose long-standing theory on how the Americas were populated was turned on its head."
Surprised to see this here.
WA State Ping-able?
this has taken a long time but it is worth the wait!
Clinton holdovers are everywhere
Squandering taxpayers money on idiotic, politically correct legal actions
Clinton holdovers are everywhere
Squandering taxpayers money on idiotic, politically correct legal actions
Depends on how old you were when the wait started and how many decades they can keep stalling.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
More Kennewick Man (aka Patrick Stewart) news:
Actor Stewart recovers from angioplasty
By ANTHONY BREZNICAN
AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES — "X-Men" star Patrick Stewart is recovering at home after undergoing an angioplasty procedure earlier this week to widen an artery, his publicist said Friday.
Angioplasty involves the use of catheters to place a small balloon in a narrowed blood channel. When the balloon is inflated, the artery flows more freely.
The 64-year-old Stewart - who played Professor Xavier in "X-Men" and its sequel, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" - went in for an annual physical on Monday, according to his publicist, Kelly Bush.
Doctors detected a blood-flow problem and recommended "pre-emptive angioplasty" to head off any future ailments.
Bush described the procedure as a success and said he is resting before returning to work next week, where he plans to finish the upcoming movie "The Game of Their Lives." He will also start voice over work on the Fox TV animated series "American Dad."
However, Stewart's recovery will force him to miss a planned personal appearance on Saturday in Toronto, where he was set to visit a Canadian sci-fi festival.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/APWires/headlines/D84NRE3O0.html
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