Because, as we all know, the intellectual curiosity of a man in a white suit outweighs the familial affections of a man with red skin.

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Yes, science trumps superstition. Fuck that "cultural relativism" bullshit.

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They have about as much a familial connection to those bones as I do with Willian the Conqueror. Much less, actually, considering that these remains are all of 9,000 years old.

Anyway, if the "men with red skin" were serious about this, they simply would've a small army of the undead to reclaim old Patrick.

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What familial affections? There is no evidence whatsoever that this skeleton is related to any of these tribes.

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In a white suit? Hell yes! David Byrne's curiosity trumps all comers!

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When the scientists are done with his skull, they're going to give it to me, and I'm going to make love to it on my couch while watching star trek reruns.

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Mmmm, Patrick Stewart...

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The Picard!

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Wow. The courts finally settled this.
I remembered watching this on 60 Minutes many years ago. The other issue was that the "Kennewick Man" had European features and pre-dates Native American settlers. That means that the Kennewick Man or the European man came to the New World before the Natives did. This would have many implications to it, which wouldn't benefit Native Americans.

Personally, science 0wnz dogmatic beliefs.

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this is not text.

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But what does everybody feel about Jewish people?!?

BTW, Jamie, dina's friend was one of the guys that found Kennewick man. Apparently he was sneaking into a boat show, treading through the water to avoid the entry fee at the front gate at the pier, and stepped on him or something. I've heard this story about a dozen times since we've been dating.

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You've heard it a dozen times because some friends of mine sneaking into a boat show and finding a skull that turns out to be Kennewick man is a good story.
Anyhow, his descendents obviously didn't care about him enough to go looking for him. It's like those people who suddenly become your best friend when something big happens to you. How do they know what his burial tradtions were thousands of years ago? How do they know that he hadn't been given a proper burial in the first place? Or maybe he was a societal outcast not allowed to be buried with the others. Whatever the case, this was no longer sacred ground. He was left to be found at a boat show by drunk Irish-American kids who had thought they might have solved a murder mystery.

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I think it's fine they pour over this skull. My problem is the experiments they conduct on our older relatives... like homo habilis. In my culture (which you are welcome to join) we have a great deal of reverence for the "ancients" who lived in Olduvai Gorge. They were special because they had no language, stood about 2 and a half feet tall, were eaten by leopards and howled at the moon during the night. We have great respect for them. You should too. Let them sleep.

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Were their enemies visited by a large black monolith?

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Okay, so my dad's an archaeologist. And my great-grandmother was probably Cherokee. (Not on the rolls, so I can't claim tribe.)

I'm on the side of science on this one, I admit. At some point we have to draw the line between science and faith, and I think that a reasonably respectful examination of the very dead probably-not-ancestor would benefit the sciences - and they had better take lots of records/measures/photos/casts before it's put back where it's found with appropriate ceremony by whoever feels like performing one.

Nonetheless, the anti-Native American outbursts on this subject - here and elsewhere - are pretty fucking appalling. Mr. 'drunk casino worker' up there probably can't claim much better for ancestry - who can? - but so far, while the Amerindian voice may not win on logic, it's ahead on good manners (aka 'not being a racist fuck' in this context).

I don't believe the NA nations were protesting this case specifically because it might prove that this 'ancestor' wasn't an ancestor, or that Caucasians got to this mudpatch before somebody else. Most such archaeological cases (possible Amerindian corpses) require some politeness and politicking with the local tribes, and sometimes one side or the other wins. I think this case went high-profile because the scientists wouldn't give up as quickly on a 'unique find' as they sometimes do on yet another 19th century NA burial site.

In an interesting counterpoint, any of y'all SF locals familiar with Mission Dolores' graveyards? Every so often I go down there and yell fruitlessly at whatever student is stuck manning the gift shop, in protest. Of what? Well, while I respect and would support historical sites financially if I wasn't unemployed, it irks me to have to pay to go into the graveyard - not the building, the graveyard - where one of my great-grandparents happens to be buried. Colma doesn't charge admission, last I checked. But what really pisses me off is the missing graves. When Mission St (I may have the wrong street) was widened a few decades ago, they whacked off a chunk of the old graveyard and shoved it to Colma. Archaeologists carefully identified, numbered, labeled and charted all the Indian remains, which were re-interred in a nice memorial - that's all well and good. And the Irish and whatever white early settlers with the headstones? Nobody seems to know. My great-grandparents, husband and wife, were buried next to each other. Now my grandfather's gone missing. From reports of those who knew him, neither the living nor his dead wife probably miss him much, but the principle of the thing still pisses me off.

Thankfully, all my family since then have voted for cremation and being dumped in the Bay where future archaeologists won't find us. Even Dad.

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Truth be told, that large mall in Emeryville is also on a tribal burial ground.

--Which is one of the reasons there was such a delay in the building of it -- there had to be tribal members on site during construction.

My girlfriend did some of the environmental auditing on the site when it was still being built, and you should have seen some of the bones they had to dig up and random containers of radioactive waste that was unburied.

Makes you think twice about shopping at Old Navy. Err.

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The judge who ruled on this case was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1999.

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We still get to keep all our Mummies, right?

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I think perhaps what your missing is that it's really not about the value of the remains. It's about respect. If I go into your home, act like a total dick, find something and claim that it's important to me so you should let me have it, how likely are you to say "sure, go ahead!"

If the contempt shown to AmerIndians were really over with the smallpox epidemics, you might have a leg to stand on. Maybe. But if you've paid taxes, you've paid for the forced sterilization of Native American women. It's well documented. Most of the documentation is for the 1970's, but there are reports of it being routine up through the 1990's, and possibly continuing into the present. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, but the information is out there, and I don't need to right a doctoral thesis in the comments of your journal.

So, to reiterate the point: it's not about the value of the skeleton, it's about respect for people who are here now. And really, there is nothing that can be learned from any artifact that makes up for treating people like shit.

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Since when is it 'their home' any more than it's *my* home? I admit I have a fair amount of contempt for burial traditions generally (whose idea was burial, anyway? Reverence for ancestors is one thing, but why must they be tied to a specific place and specific remains? It's stone cold stupid, IMNSHO), but this one is over the top. There is almost no evidence that 9000 year-old-man is related to the AmerIndians *in any way*; the best available, although limited, evidence, points to other relations. So I'm with the 'to hell with 'em' camp. I have all due respect for the people who are here now; I demand equal respect for *my* traditions, which demand that science, real actual science, get equal time.
Science 1, Foolishness 0.

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Kenniwick man is french, but spoke with an english accent?

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Well well, another little ruckus on jwz's blog. And nobody even mentioned Israel! Although, truth be told, I mostly read the tail ends of threads...the parts that tend to end with "You suck!" and "Yeah, well you SMELL!", "Do not!", "Do too!"

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Seriously! Who knew that probably-not-indian skeletons were more controversial than jews!

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The first "see also" link is interesting too:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3086777.stm

I've always been bothered by the whole term "native american".
Used how it is today, it doesnt mean "native" at all- it just means "we were here before the white people"-

And the referenced genetic stuff seems to say that the amerindians really havent been here for *that* long, and quite probably were not the "first" humanids to reach the continent either.
I don't really know what happened back when the european settlers arrived, but I don't think their mindset was one of "lets go find some dark-skins and wipe em out!"-
I'm imagining that things started of congenial enough, but then for whatever reason relations broke down and well, superior technology won that battle.

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It wasn't lets go find ... wipe em out, it was lets enslave and torture em, particularly for many of the arriving Europeans of the 15-16th centuries. The actions of Columbus and those in the Jamestown settlements are prime examples.

You can read about it, with solid historical references, in Lies my Teacher Told Me.

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Kennewick Man = Pete Postlethwait

Uncanny.

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Shit he does look like Piccard doesn't he? I thought that before I read it. Does tend to make one believe in past lives. Either that or the sculptor's idea of a joke.

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I think the biggest thing to point out is that during the time that this human lived, the people that were here in North America were extremely nomadic, especially up and down the Washington/Oregon/California coast line. It was too cold to settle down otherwise.
Tribes didn't start settling the area until well after a specific volcanic eruption about 7600ybp. This skeleton is 9500-8500ybp; he could be from anywhere up and down the coast.
To me there is no argument that this man is an ancestor of the people who would eventually come to live in North America, but he's too old to be claimed by anyone but science. Maybe the Ainu in Japan who show a distinct genetic relationship to Native Americans. But he's too old to do any DNA on. They've tried.
There's also no way to make sure of anything now becuase his grave site was destroyed, along with anything that could have been a hint, shortly after his discovery by the Army Corps of Engineers...which is a whole other story that could incite further ranting/raving.
I highly suggest that people read the reports from the Department of the Interior. All of the reports thus far are archived on a specific site: http://www.cr.nps.gov/aad/kennewick/index.htm
As well as NAGPRA, the law currently being debated with Kennewick Man: http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/

As an anthropologist it saddens me that people want to yank away potentially valuable scientific study material, but I do agree with the reason NAGPRA was created: To return all skeletal material dug up, in the archaeological boom of the 1900s, where "White Superiority" was the driving force. However this immediate demand and assumption is a bit knee jerk.

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Aww shit, how can he even be Indian with a name like "Kennewick?"

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