9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocks study of Kennewick Man bones! (they just won't let it go!)

AP via SF Gate ^ | Thursday, February 20, 2003 | AP Editorial Staff

[vannrox]

Eight anthropologists who want to study an ancient skeleton must want until a federal court has heard an appeal of the case by four Northwest tribes that consider the bones sacred.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, made last week, prevents any study of the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man, which scientists have sought to examine since 1996.

[Question_Assumptions]

Just because they came from Asia does not mean that they were Orientals

What's an "oriental"? Do you mean Mongoloid? Racial groups ultimately blend into each other and the genetics don't even always make it clear where one race blends into another, though it can demonstrate, for example, that the Ainu have quite Asian genes and are not "European". Do a search for Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza on Amazon if you are really interested in the topic.

[Varda]

Finding these old remains is fascinating. DNA should reveal a lot about people in Mexico 13,000 ya. The article has one thing wrong, the skull does not predate Clovis which is believed to go back to at least 13,500 BP. While it's tantalizing to think that there is indisputable evidence of pre-Clovis occupations, I haven't seen such evidence reported.

[martin gibson]

What are they trying to HIDE? Why do they want to keep the bones from being studied?

Because the preliminary study suggests the bones may be (gasp...) European.

So much for our native American friends. Better to pave over the archeological site and then make sure the bones never see the light of day again (if they haven't been destroyed all ready...).

Go Tribe!!

[blam]

"While it's tantalizing to think that there is indisputable evidence of pre-Clovis occupations, I haven't seen such evidence reported. "

You may want to take a 'peek' at the latest on some of these sites, Monte Verde, Topper and Meadowcroft. (The Clovis Barrier has been broken)

[blam]

"What's an "oriental"? Do you mean Mongoloid? Racial groups ultimately blend into each other and the genetics don't even always make it clear where one race blends into another, though it can demonstrate, for example, that the Ainu have quite Asian genes and are not "European".

Okay if you want to put that fine a point on it. The San Bushmen (known by all in Africa as the Ancient Ones) are Mongoloid.

[pepsionice]

There is yet no absolute proof of him being Slavic but the people who would see basic differences and know the facts....have pointed this direction. What the 'Kennewick Man' does to harm the Indians is rather simple...if you can show that someone was on the American contintent prior to 2,000 years ago, and he isn't Indian...you open up a whole debate of who exactly are the Indians in the first place...and thus no importance to their legal cause.

We can already show that Eric the Red beat Columbus to the continent....its almost 95 percent fact now. And in the past 12 months, we have strong evidence that the Chinese actually landed on the continent in 1421...and perhaps left Chinese people here. That doesn't both the Indians too much.

But lets say that you can show that some Spanish heritage folks from 5,000 years ago...found their way across to the continent...then the special status of the Indians crumbles rather quickly. It is already becoming apparent that the Indians from 10,000 to 20,000 years ago hunted down the a number of speciies on the continent and wiped them out. This is something that a lot of liberal groups dispise talking about but will admit its probably true.

Eventually...somewhere along the east coast...we are going to find a second Kennewick Man, and this time....we won't be stupid enough to announce the find...we will go straight to the DNA lab and then announce the results...thus killing off the Indians special status.

[blam]

"Eventually...somewhere along the east coast...we are going to find a second Kennewick Man."

Check this link. I think they may have found his house.

Topper Site

[blam]

"You may want to take a 'peek' at the latest on some of these sites, Monte Verde, Topper and Meadowcroft. (The Clovis Barrier has been broken)"

Scratch Meadocroft....I meant Cactus Hill.

[blam]

Cactus Hill

[aristeides]

I think that, to issue an order like this, especially on an expedited basis, the 9th Circuit panel would have had to determine that the Indians were likely to win the case on the merits, once they decide it. Time for Bush to make a bunch of new appointments to the 9th Circuit (by recess appointment, if necessary) so that they will be in place by the time the whole 9th Circuit votes on whether to rehear the case en banc after the panel that made this decision decides the appeal.

[Alberta's Child]

Eventually ... somewhere along the east coast ... we are going to find a second Kennewick Man, and this time ... we won't be stupid enough to announce the find . . .

That's not a bad idea. I've got a friend who is a contractor in the timber industry in western Canada, and he had his job site shut down for several weeks after he found an Indian burial site out in the forest in the middle of nowhere.

After all the endless bureaucratic bullsh!t, he told the people at the Native Affairs office that the next time he came across one of those things he was just going to plow it over and tear up all the trees.

And I know this guy -- he will do it.

[Redcloak]

It's about maintaining the Indians' political position as "The Perfect Victim". In that mythology, the Indian lived peacefully and in harmony with nature. All was perfect and the New World was another Eden... Until the EvilWhiteMan© invaded like locusts from Hell!

Reality is, of course, quite different. The Paleoindians erradicated many native species either through over hunting or habitat destruction. They also pushed out other Neolithic peoples living in the new world. The real Indians, as opposed to the gentle ones of myth, aren't likely to inspire much sympathy. Thus modern Indians, in search of Federal funding, are eager to maintain the myth. The more perfect their existence before we "invaded", the more perfect their victimhood, and the more money they can demand in payment for our "sins". The Democrats want to maintain that money flow as it provides them with votes. This is why the Clintonistas demolished the Kenniwick site and why the 9th Circus is still trying to destroy the bones.

Kenniwick Man threatens the myth and thus the cash flow. This is why they want to destroy his remains. Similarly, any archaeological evidence that supports the theory that others entered the New World from Europe or Africa is suppressed. Those who explore sites that are "too old" or study the similarities between the Clovis and Solutrean cultures often find themselves under attack; usually accused of "racism" or "insensitivity". Any deviation from the PC History of the Americas is suspect and attacked.

Long story short: Follow the money.

[FreeTheHostages]

You could be right, but I'd note that that's one of the places where I litigate and they very routinely just grant stays. One-judge ruling in the first instance, according to their internal practices. So this could mean something . . . or not.

But as to the need for the 9th Circuit to "get a grip" and get some new Bush appointees, count me among your supporters for that cause.

[aristeides]

Did you see that all four of the cases on which the Supreme Court granted cert today are out of the Ninth Circuit? (I read that in the How Appealing blog.)

[blam]

Read This:

1491

[dsc]

"From what I (vaguely) recall, the "Japanese" entered the islands from the south, starting sometime not long before Christ, and have been spreading north and east ever since."

The Japanese, like the Chinese, like to push the genesis of their country back as far as possible. However, the available evidence just won't support anything earlier than the 6th or 7th centuries.

The dirty little secret is that it appears that the originators of the so-called "Yamato Race" were Korean pirates.

That, by the way, is an extremely unpopular notion among the Japanese, so be careful where (or if) you bring it up.

[Varda]

Well, you sent me to the library LOL! I love watching the scientific fur fly on these issues.

Looks like Cactus Hill is promising but not at the indesputable evidence level.

"Microscopic studies of soil structure at Cactus Hill, however, suggest that geological forces may have affected the artifact layers, assert Carole A. Mandryk and J. Taylor Perron of Harvard University. "I don't think it's been proved that these artifacts come from undisturbed locations," Mandryk says.

Vance Haynes of the University of Arizona in Tucson also views Cactus Hill cautiously. He awaits further radiocarbon tests before accepting the site's age estimates. Haynes says that it's "most unusual" that only 6 inches of soil separate the two occupation levels and so must cover a span of about 5,000 years.

Still, "Cactus Hill is the best candidate for a pre-Clovis site in a long time," Haynes remarks"
http://www.sciencenews.org/20000415/fob1.asp

[Varda]

Monte Verde is dated at 12,500 rcybp and really looks like a pre-Clovis settlement.

"Monte Verde and beyond
The most accepted pre-Clovis site--although it still has skeptics--is Monte Verde , in south-central Chile. It took 2 decades for it to be recognized, and its principal investigator, Tom Dillehay of the University of Kentucky, Lexington, campaigned hard to win converts. His work centers on what appears to be an ancient dwelling in an upland bog 56 kilometers from the Pacific coast. Beside a small creek, Dillehay and his group unearthed the remains of several primitive structures, stone and wood implements, fire pits, and chewed plant cuds. The quantity of evidence is massive, but the carbon dates were controversial: Some reviewers had balked at dates of at least 12,500 years BP--long before the Clovis people set foot in North America.

In 1997, Dillehay invited a panel of well-known archaeologists to the site, handing each of them a bulky site report published by his sponsor, the Smithsonian Institution. The members responded with a unanimous vote of confidence (Science, 28 February 1997, p. 1256). Even Haynes, who felt he was included as the odd man out on the panel, accepted the early date.

That acceptance, according to Meltzer, "broke the logjam" of skepticism about pre-Clovis dwellings. It also helped that Clovis-contemporary or pre-Clovis sites have popped up in Venezuela and Brazil (Science, 19 April 1996, pp. 346, 373 ). Considering all the evidence, Meltzer adds, "it's striking that there's so much material at 11,000 years BP in South America; it suggests that people had been there a long time."

But even Monte Verde has been challenged again. In 1999, archaeologist Stuart Fiedel, a pre-Clovis skeptic at the consulting firm of John Milner Associates in Alexandria, Virginia, blasted the quality of Dillehay's site report in a long critique published in the popular journal Discovering Archaeology. Fiedel found many glitches, noting for example that key artifacts were described as being unearthed in different locations (Science, 22 October 1999, p. 657 ). Although Meltzer and others say Fiedel's review was nitpicking and unfair, it had an impact. Haynes again began to raise questions about whether the artifacts might be younger objects mixed with older material and animal bones in a flood of glacial water." (Pre-Clovis Sites Fight for Acceptance, Science, 2 Mar 2001)

[Carry_Okie]

Not only was the Corpse of Engineers involved in burying this story, but so was the Smithsonian. Clinton sent the same guy who did the autopsies at Waco to "manage" the site. It was he who ordered the place bulldozed and cottonwoods planted on top.

[Carry_Okie]

The reason is, I enjoy so much these threads (and there has been many) of all you guys wanting so much for him to be white. This tells me that in all these years since you came to America nothing has really changed. Its all about 'white' and manifest destiny.

Not quite. It's more that white folks now see the government in the hands of the Eastern elite taking their land just as they did to you and using "Native" American claims to get it done. They'll screw the tribes again later.

I don't really give a damn who was "here first" as resolving any specific claims is a subjective exercise for the lack of hard data. You would have to see the shamans they hire around here for $125/hour to come tell developers what's "sprirtual" and what isn't often by the process of divination. It has rendered the rule of law into a cruel joke.

What I object to with this Kenneweck fiasco is that the process of discovering the truth is impeded. I also think that if the public wants to know, they should pay whoever owns that land for the value of the discovery. As you inferred, it is a fluid and plastic picture that emerges from the data over time. No data, no picture. Doesn't that inerest all of us?