Scientists releasing Kennewick Man research

Tri-City Herald ^ | February 22, 2006 | Anna King, Herald staff writer

[longtermmemmory]

Kenewick man has POLITICAL implications.

It shatters the meme of "indians were always here".

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam & Spunky.

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[Ptarmigan]

Kennewick Man was Ainu/Polynesian, like the ones you see in Japan and South Pacific. I bet they also lived in Korea before the modern day Koreans came.

[Tallguy]

Nah, I'm thinking D. B. Cooper.

Yeah, but all those greebacks he jumped with have serial numbers & dates on them. You don't suppose the scientists could have missed that? /sarcasm

[Chuzzlewit]

yep.. interesting. pretty darn exciting.

[Slicksadick]

http://www.friendsofpast.org/
I don't know if you've cruised this site, but I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

[dennisw]

Let me take a guess at what WON'T be said:
"Kennewick Man was Caucasian."

As far as I can tell he was something like an Ainu-Mongol of some kind and has bone structure unlike the tribes there today. How would a Caucasian (European) find his way over to the West Coast of the USA???  East Coast I can see but not the West Coast which is where Kennewick Man was found. The Indian tribes have been disgraceful in this affair

[Right Wing Professor]

Problem is, the Bush Administration continued the Clinton Administration's policy of trying to get the courts to give the bones to a local tribe. Very few national leaders came out of this case looking good.

(McCain, of course, looked worse than most, as he always does)

[Wombat101]

Just the other day on another thread an article suggested that European Ice-Age hunters very often followed the seal herds out onto the ice with skin boats and by hopping between ice floes.

When you stop to consider the "Bering Strait land bridge" theory of American Indian migration from Asia, the "skin boat and floe hopping idea" doesn't sound that far fetched.
We know from our own history that Amerindian tribes were often exceedingly welcoming and helpful to strangers (just as the American 'Pilgrims', Columbus and Cortez). The Polynesians settled the entire Pacific by island hopping. It's not out of the realm of possibility that an Ice Age European found himself adrift or lost and found his way to America, and was helped and defended by the 'native' tribes. Given enough time to learn the 'native' culture, and how to survive in a strange land, an Ice Age European could (relatively) easily make his way from the East Coast to the West. Either on his own, as a slave or as a fugitive.

The biggest problem is that the ancient people in question did not leave any written records, and what evidence is found of them is subjected to review through the lens of political correctness and the prevailing theories being taught as fact.

In this regard, Kennewick Man MUST be viewed through the lens of theories that, as yet, cannot be proven and possibly will never be proven.

It's the same logic that states that because we find more early human fossils (for example), of greater age, in Eithiopia or South Africa, that mankind originiated in that continent. One would expect to find more of them in the remote areas of Africa, which have not seen destructive warfare or repeated development, unlike Europe or most of Asia.

Right now the answers to some of these questions might be buried under the streets of Moscow, Beijing, London or Katmandu, but no one is digging there, are they? The reasons why are obvious. So, without definitive proof of anything, we simply postulate a theory and then fit the available evidence into it, and then proceed to call it fact.