Saying NA weren't the first -- BURIAL GROUND DESECRATIONS,ETC.

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Date Posted: 09:13:35 04/09/01 Mon
Author: ADV Reporter
Subject: Saying NA weren't the first

http://www.canada.com/cgi-bin/np.asp?f=/news/nationalpost/stories/20010407/5
26555.html

PORTLAND, Ore. - At first, they thought the bones in the muddy shallows of
the Columbia River were a joke.

Two college students watching a hydroplane race near Kennewick, Wash., were
wading when one saw what he thought was a rock resembling a skull and
hoisted it out to frighten his friend. Instead, the skull and the human
skeleton the men uncovered six years ago threatened to turn history on its
head and started a custody battle that is due to conclude in a Portland
courtoom in June.

When the Benton County coroner called in forensic anthropologist James
Chatters to review the case, the scientist thought he was dealing with the
remains of a 19th-century settler.

As he examined the skull and checked off a standard government form, Dr.
Chatters labelled the remains Caucasoid because of its narrow face, long
head and jutting chin.

"The skull was immediately European-like -- long, narrow, very constricted
behind the eyes, with a very prominent nose," he says. "I immediately got
the impression I was dealing with a European, probably an early Kennewick
pioneer. I had no idea where this story was going at that point."

But closer examination raised some curious questions.

The scientist soon decided he was investigating the death of a robust,
muscular, middle-aged man, about 5 feet 9 inches tall and aged 44 to 55. He
had lived a battle-scarred existence, including fractures of at least six
ribs, a withered left arm and a partially healed injury to the right hip.

When the bones were scanned in a laboratory, the forensic anthropologist
discovered the tip of a leaf-shaped stone spear embedded in the hip.

"The point raised the possibility of great antiquity," Dr. Chatters says.
"We either had an ancient individual with physical characteristics unlike
later native peoples' or a trapper-explorer who'd had difficulties with
Stone Age peoples during his travels."

To solve the mystery, the coroner ordered radiocarbon dating tests of a
small bone chip.

To Dr. Chatters' amazement, the bone was estimated to be 9,320 to 9,510
years old, making Kennewick Man one of the oldest skeletons discovered in
North America.

In an instant, the bones threatened to overthrow everything scientists
thought they knew about how North and South America were populated.

The skeleton, with its distinct non-native American features, immediately
undermined the "We were here first and you stole our land" theories and
raised the fascinating possibility Ice Age Europeans may have trickled into
the region up to 8,000 years before the first known European presence.

It was possible scientists would use Kennewick Man to show the New World was
populated by a multi-cultural throng of peoples who have long since
vanished.

The implications for the prehistory of North and South America were immense.

"I really hope that a lot of native American people do not feel threatened
or think that these new ideas jeopardize their claims to traditional lands,"
says Rob Bonnichsen, director of the Center for the Study of the First
Americas at Oregon State University.

"But they, like some of the rest of us, may have come in fairly late. Maybe
they were only here for a few hundred years or a few thousand years."

While scientists were fascinated by the possibilities, other groups
scrambled to further their own causes. White supremacist organizations
gloated at the idea of North America being first populated by Europeans,
instead of by Indians. A cult of neo-Vikings from northern California, known
as the Asatru Folk Assembly, claimed the Kennewick skeleton was an ancient
Viking warrior.

Then the U.S. government stepped in.

Days after scientists dated the bones last September, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers -- it controls the land on which the remains were found -- ruled
the skeleton should be regarded as "native American" and handed over to five
local tribes.

The Army based its decision on a 1991 federal law, the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, designed to protect native American
burial sites from being disturbed and return all ancestral remains held in
U.S. museum collections.

The local tribes instantly said they would refuse any further scientific
study of Kennewick Man and they intended to bury the skeleton in a secret
location after holding a religious ceremony for their "ancient ancestor."

"We don't want these remains studied or destroyed, because of our belief
that these human remains are sacred," says Armand Minthorn, a spokesman for
the Confederation of Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation.

"Our sacred human remains should not be a product to generate data for the
'people.' We already know about our past. We have oral histories that go
back 10,000 years. We know where our people lived, how they lived, what they
lived by."

Alarmed by the government's decision to allow the tribes to dispose of
Kennewick Man, a group of leading U.S. anthropologists and archeologists
launched a court appeal to prevent the skeleton's burial.

After five years of legal manoeuvring, a ruling is expected in June.

"In effect, the government's decision to culturally affiliate this skeleton
was arbitrary and capricious," says Alan Schneider, a lawyer for eight
scientists who are suing to study Kennewick Man.

U.S. government officials argue it's "not likely any relationship of lineal
descent can be made" and say they relied on "cultural affiliation" -- a
variety of geographic, kinship, archeological, linguistic and oral tradition
factors -- to decide Kennewick Man should be classified as a native
American.

"We believe Kennewick Man was born, lived out his life and died in this part
of the country about 9,000 years ago," says Dr. Francis McManamon, chief
archeologist with the U.S. National Parks Service.

"His ancestors were almost certainly Asian. These distant ancestors were
part of the initial movement of people from northeastern Asia that gradually
crossed the Bering Land Bridge or paddled along its shoreline when the land
bridge was exposed thousands of years before their descendant lived along
the Columbia River."

Other relatives of Kennewick Man probably moved into what is now Japan,
coastal China and the islands of the Pacific, he adds.

The scientists don't want to concede anything just yet. They want time to
think about it.

"If scientific study is closed off, a very rare and valuable set of skeletal
remains will be lost," says Dr. Bonnichsen.

"The picture is complex and we'll never know what that picture is unless we
have the privilege to study ancient remains

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Replies:

[> Re: Saying NA weren't the first -- Nick, 01:57:57 07/17/01 Tue

I just stumbled onto this article while surfing the web. I can'y believe those idiot scientists classified the skeleton as "native American". Of coarse it's native American. Why couldn't it be? Oh, wait, wait...genetic testing already proved that it was Caucasin!! What a bunch of morons! That one stone with the Nordic runes all over it was dicovered a few years back (maybe decades, i don't remember) somwhere in the US, and it was established that Vikings had been here a long time ago. I agree witht he Asatru Folk Assembly, it's a Scandanavian ancestor, plain and simple. The skeleton should be given to the AFA.

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