9,300 year old Kennewick Man
Posted on 02/04/2004 8:09:28 PM PST by concentric circles
Scientists can study the 9,300-year-old remains of the Kennewick Man, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today. The court upheld a decision last August by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Jelderks in Portland that the remains, which Northwest Indian tribes consider sacred, can be studied.
The tribes wanted the bones, found on the north bank of the Columbia River in 1996 by teenagers going to a boat race, turned over to them for burial.
The three-judge panel found that the remains do not fall under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and can be studied under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.
The decision was written by Judge Ronald M. Gould.
The bones currently are housed at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The Army Corps of Engineers initially agreed with the tribes and seized the bones before they could be transported to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Scientists seeking to study the bones went to court to get access to them but eventually the decision was made by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who ordered the bones returned to the tribes in September 2000.
But the appeals court wrote that the repatriation law "unambiguously requires that human remains bear some relationship to a presently existing tribe or people, or culture to be considered Native American."
Interior Department scientists concluded the remains were unlike those of any known modern Indians but it did not rule out some distant biological connection.
The appeals court, however, said there must be a more recent link to justify returning the bones and preventing any scientific study.
The ruling said the remains date to a time before any recorded history and that that makes it impossible to establish any relationship with existing Indians.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Denying a request by American Indian tribes who sought an immediate burial, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday that scientists should be allowed to continue testing on a 9,000-year-old skeleton.
"It's terrific," said Robson Bonnichsen director of Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of the First Americans and a plaintiff in the case. "The court has upheld the principle for scientific study of very early human remains."
The legal battle pitting Bonnichsen and seven other scientists against the U.S. government and Indian tribes dates back to 1996, after two teenagers discovered a skeleton near the shore of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington.
Scientists dated the "Kennewick Man" remains as 8,340 to 9,200 years old, yet it was a puzzling find because its features differed from those of American Indians. Scientists hoped further study would shed light on early North Americans.
Indian tribes demanded the burial of the remains, which they believe belong to a distant relative, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied that request, backing a lower court ruling.
"From the perspective of the scientists-plaintiffs, this skeleton is an irreplaceable source of information about early New World populations that warrants careful scientific inquiry to advance knowledge of distant times," Judge Ronald Gould wrote for the three-judge panel.
"From the perspective of the intervenor-Indian tribes the skeleton is that of an ancestor who, according to the tribes' religious and social traditions, should be buried immediately without further testing."
The battle was especially emotional because of the mystery the "Kennewick Man" represented. Aged 45 or 50 when he died, he had a projectile point unlike those seen in the region in his hip dating back to when he was 15 or 20 years old.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which had fought to bury the remains, said it was reviewing the decision but did not say whether it would appeal to the Supreme Court.
MYSTERIOUS ANCESTOR
Until recently, most scientists thought North America was first populated after the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago when Asian mammoth hunters walked from Siberia. Yet recent evidence has hinted at late Ice Age human settlements on California's channel islands and in Chile, suggesting earlier settlers may have arrived by boat from different regions.
The core of the legal arguments centered on whether the remains were Native American, as the law on reburial requires a link between the remains and an extant tribe.
"The age of Kennewick Man's remains, given the limited studies to date, makes it almost impossible to establish any relationship between the remains and presently existing American Indians," the ruling found.
Without a clear link between the skeleton and Native Americans, the court gave a green light to science.
We "affirm the judgment of the district court barring the transfer of the skeleton for immediate burial and instead permitting scientific study of the skeleton," the court wrote.
Ping to you, Blam.
Thanks. Already talkin it to death on this thread.
I, for one, sure wouldn't be surprise. After all, the special status of certain "minorities" (and those who cater to/control them) looks like its threatening to start doing a Ghost Dance.
Was everyone out sick today? Was this done by substitute judges?
Try a search for Pasco Man or Richland Man
No pictures.(?)
9,300 year old Kennewick Man
9,400 Year Old Spirit Cave Man, the oldest mummy ever found in the Americas.
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