Kerrywick Man
Posted on 02/07/2004 12:10:42 PM PST by blam
Kennewick Man speaks
Kennewick Man has held onto his secrets for more than 9,000 years and now, finally, scientists will get a chance to be his voice.
This week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals pushed the truths resting within the bones at the Burke Museum closer to the light with its decision that scientists can study them. The appeals court affirmed a lower-court decision that the Interior Department erred in its decision to give the bones to the Native American tribes that claim them as those of an ancestor. The government might appeal to the Supreme Court.
But the 9th Circuit's ruling explicitly concludes there is no evidence of a genetic or cultural link between Kennewick Man and the modern-day tribes. Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt ruled the remains found on federal property should be given to the tribes under the federal repatriation law because the bones predated Columbus' 1492 landing in North America. The tribes, who want to bury the remains, argued Kennewick Man was their ancestor because their oral histories contained no migration stories.
But eight prominent scientists sued for the right to study Kennewick Man and shed light on the peopling of the Americas. Limited studies concluded the remains more closely resemble modern-day people in Polynesia or the Ainu of Japan than they do Native Americans. Experts say they also resemble those of other ancient bones found elsewhere in the Americas far from the Columbia River Basin and, some believe, a set of 25,000-year-old bones in China.
The court's rejection of the pre-Columbian rule has implications for the study of other ancient remains, including those of Pan Era Woman, a set of 12,000-year-old remains found on federal property in Texas. Kennewick Man is holding the door open so other ancient remains aren't buried with their secrets.
The Native American Graves and Repatriation Act is a good law designed to return remains and artifacts to tribes with which actual connections can be established. But as science suggested and a federal judge and appeals court concluded — Kennewick Man is in a different category.
He belongs to all of us.
That is taking PC to absurd extremes. Now we must allow primitive savages' ignorance to drive scientific inquiry?
Whether they were too ignorant to find out about migrations or not, clearly they are newcomers. It will be clearly proven that Kennewick man predates all "native" Americans by a whole bunch.
PC.... R.I.P.
Kerrywick Man
I say, at least 3,000 years and probably much more. Arlington Springs Woman has been dated to 13,000BP. (The oldest human skeleton ever found in the Americas)
In Language in the Americas he presents evidence that all the native languages of N and S. America fit into three groups:
Eskimo-Aleut
Na-Dene (=Athabaskan, Eyak, Tlingit and Haida - all spoken in Alaska, Canada, and the Pacific NW, with the exception of Apache and Navajo), and
Amerindian - all other Indian languages, including all in Central and South America.
The three-way split seems to be reflected in genetic studies
He also wrote Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family vol I grammar, vol II lexicon.
In it, he proposes that IndoEuropean, Uralic-Yukaghir (includes Finnnish and Hungarian), Altaic (=Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic) Korean-Japanese-Ainu, Gilyak (spoken N. of Japan on Sakhalin Island), Chukchi-Kamchatkan (Asian side of Bering Strait) and Eskimo-Aleut form a genetic language family.
Needless to say, both of these proposals are very controversial.
Greenberg was of the opinion that Amerindian was most closely related to Eurasiatic.
Other linguists, including the Russian Nostraticists, have come to the conclusion that Na-Dene, Sino-Tibetan, North Caucasian, Yeniesian, Burushaski, and Basque are also a genetic family, considerably older than Eurasiatic.
Google searches on these words will turn up a lot of hits.
Yes it is
You better get back on your medication sonny.
Sure beats having a bureaucrat do it on a whim (Babbit), or the Indians based on their ignorance and PC and nothing else.
Others Disagree with your claims of fraud. Perhaps you can show peer-reviewed experimental evidence that refutes the principles of dating. A list of these other akeletal remains would be useful.
Well, you certain chose the right screen name...
Wherever you got this nonsense, I strongly suggest that you not trust them to be a reliable source on whatever else they try to tell you, because on this issue they were either lying, or incredibly ignorant, or both.
Really! Does that mean you don't agree with scientific forensic evidence being used in trials, either?
As an example of what you can get into when the courts, and politicians get into scientific matters, I need only remind you of the situation with the Indiana legislature in the 1920's.
One of the legislators had a daughter who was having a problem grasping the mathematical concept of pi [you know 3.14.......etc.]. He introduced, and passed through the [unfortunately largely Republican] state legislature, a bill establishing the value of pi as 4.
I hazard that this person cares not about his source, or accuracy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.