Four University of New Mexico anthropologists have written an article where they suggest that a precedent in Paleoindian human remains is “inappropriate and unnecessary.” They claim that each case is unique and that repatriation determination should be handled case-by-case.
I have not found anthropologists to be among the best and brightest practitioners of "science", and I use that term reluctantly.
Their entire schtick consists on piling guesses on speculation ad infinitum, and are quite dogmatic about their final conclusions, as well as their high regard for their own work.
I no more see a reason for some anthropologists to use their soft science as the springboard to political control of all other sciences. Certainly no more so than allowing contemporary romanticized native americans to do so, on the basis of superstition alone.
The findings of the original case, the fundamental question, was that modern indians have no more connection to and ownership of the remains from around the last ice age, than European newcomers do!
"The findings of the original case, the fundamental question, was that modern Indians have no more connection to and ownership of the remains from around the last ice age, than European newcomers do!"
Even in the unconfirmed and largely unconfirmable science of anthropology, it is culture as much as DNA that defines "a people" (tribe/"ethnic group). And even the anthropologists cannot define any cultural relationship from 13,000 year old north American remains to ANY culture they claim to identify, past or present, by any scientific process. Until some future knowledge changes that fact, the "remains" should belong to science and not to any particular "tribe".
European Newcomers. Nice choice of words, and true.