Spirit Cave Man
Posted on 10/04/2006 5:24:51 PM PDT by blam
The Spirit Cave Man Lawsuit
NEWS: The Court has remanded the matter back to the Bureau of Land Management for further proceedings. See Order (posted 9/25/06)
-- The text of the Conclusion
In July 2000 the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a determination that the Spirit Cave Man could not be culturally linked to the claiming Fallon-Paiute Shoshone tribe. The tribe filed a lawsuit asking the Federal Court to review their claim under NAGPRA.
In their determination, the BLM assumed that the Spirit Cave Man was Native American based solely on his age. In the Kennewick Man lawsuit, the Ninth Circuit found that relying on age alone was insufficient to establish remains as Native American for the purposes of NAGPRA. The Ninth Circuit Court's opinion in the Kennewick Man lawsuit applies to the Spirit Cave Man lawsuit.
Five "friends of the court" (amicus curiae) briefs were filed in support of the BLM's determination. Raising the Kennewick Man opinion as precedent, Friends of America's Past reminded the court that NAGPRA's first requirement is to determine if remains are Native American as defined in the statute. The other briefs discussed the limits of oral tradition and linguistics as evidence, archeological interests, and the concerns of ethnic miniorities.
A statement released for the press
A preliminary comparison of the Spirit Cave Man and the Kennewick Man. This table will be updated after scientists bringing a range of perspectives have been allowed to study.
Questions & Answers about the Spirit Cave Man
Pictures of the Spirit Cave man: the original burial bundle and facial reconstruction using casts of the cranium [posted with permission from Dr. Douglas Owsley and photographer Chip Clark, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History]
Key Documents New documents added to the top of the list when filed.
Court Order remands the matter back to Bureau of Land Management for further proceedings consistent with the Order (filed 9/21/06)
Government's (BLM) Reply to Tribes Response Brief (filed 4/11/06)
Tribe's Response to Government's (BLM) Reply Brief (filed 1/31/06)
Amicus Brief: National Congress of American Indians (filed 01/31/06)
Government's (BLM) Reply Brief (filed 11/17/05)
Amicus Brief: Friends of America's Past (filed 10/28/05)
Amicus Brief: Oral Tradition (filed 10/28/05)
Amicus Brief: Linguistics (filed 10/28/05)
Amicus Brief: Ohio Archeological Council (filed 10/28/05)
Amicus Brief: Ethnic Minority Council (filed 10/27/05)
Tribe's Opening Brief: part 1, 2, 3, 4 (filed 9/2/05)
Government's (BLM) Answer (filed 12/17/04)
Tribe's Complaint (filed 8/27/04)
BLM Determination Spirit Cave Man (full text) (7/26/00)
BLM Summary of the Determination Spirit Cave Man (7/26/00)
BLM Press Release: Determination Spirit Cave Man (8/15/00)
I will be posting other details about Spirit Cave Man as the thread progresses.
Spirit Cave Man
Spirit Cave Man
Bump. Intersting.
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
spell-check is my friend
He`s got a very stylish haircut.
Spirit Cave Man
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Found: 1940, in Spirit Cave near Fallon, Nev.
Age: 9,400 years
Discoverers: S.M. and Georgia Wheeler
Significance: One of the most securely dated ancient Americans. In addition, such rarely perserved items as hair, skin, clothing and textiles were recovered.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spirit Cave Man eked out a life among the oases of an unforgiving desert. He fished in Great Basin lakes, hunted small mammals and wore clothing woven from strips of pelts and marsh plants.
The hunter survived to his mid-40s. But he had broken his right hand and suffered chronic back pain from arthritis, herniated disks and a fracture in his spine. A blow to the left temple dented and cracked his skull, which had just begun to heal when he died, perhaps from that injury or the advanced abscesses in his upper and lower jaws.
He was buried lying on his right side, arm flexed so his hand rested beneath the chin, in a shallow grave dug in a desert cave. The cave's climate preserved patches of skin and reddish-brown shoulder-length hair on the skull, making him North America's oldest mummy. Dried intestines contained fish bones from a final meal.
Also preserved were his rabbit fur robe, two shrouds of woven tule reeds, and well-worn moccasins of three kinds of animal hide, sewn with hemp and sinew, and patched on the soles. Copyright © 1999 Discovery Communications Inc.
A mummy excavated in 1940 and stored at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City was recently dated to ca. 7420 B.C., making it the oldest mummy ever discovered in North America.
Donald Tuohy and Amy Dansie of the Nevada State Museum say the mummy, a male about 45 years old, was one of several gathered from caves in Nevada's Churchill County. Its excellent state of preservation had led earlier researchers to believe it was ca. 2,000 years old. Dansie and Tuohy were astonished when radiocarbon tests of hair and bone and two mats covering the body yielded dates more than 7,000 years older.
Discovered during salvage excavations in advance of a guano-mining project, the mummy was found lying on a fur blanket dressed in a twisted skin robe with leather moccasins on its feet and a twined mat sewn around its head and shoulders. A similar mat was wrapped around the lower portion of the body and bound under the feet. Skin remained on the back and shoulders as well as a small tuft of straight dark hair, which changed to reddish-brown when exposed to light and air.
The man may have died from complications associated with a skull fracture or abscessed teeth, according to Gentry Steele of Texas A&M University, who examined the body. Fifty-eight other fiber and fur artifacts were found in the cave, including two bags containing cremated human remains. The style of weaving used in the textiles, known as diamond-plaited matting, marks the earliest stage in North American weaving technology. "People were more settled than we thought," says Dansie, noting the time it must have taken to gather the fibers and weave them into mats.
***spell-check is my friend***
A lesson I still need to learn.
I have been on here for years, posted many posts and didn't see the button "spell" till two weeks ago.
I'm familiar with certain parts of Mineral County. Where was HE when I was there! (Or his descendants!) LOL!
That sculpture looks like yet another outstanding Frank Bender effort.
Yul Brenner ain't got nuttin' on him!
Indian bigots will do ANYTHING to hide the truth that their ancestors were not the first Americans.
THe model didn't need to have brown eyes, reddish skin tones. The eye ridges are remarkably flat and don't resemble asian features, at all.
I thought Jean Luc Picard was from the future, not the past...
Please expound.
Captain Jack
What a history you have in your family, amazing.
Well, if you get posession, can we study him?
BTW, Captain Jack doesn't look very Asian. Maybe he's related to Kennewick Man, huh?
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