THOUSANDS..................
Posted on 11/08/2007 6:24:59 AM PST by blam
Next Kennewick Man will need protection
Published Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
The court decision to allow scientists to study the ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man has aided humankind's quest for knowledge.
Unfortunately, it also spawned a congressional effort to change federal law to keep science from learning anything about the next Kennewick Man.
U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings is trying to thwart the move with proposed legislation of his own. Good for him.
With so many unanswered questions about man's future, we've never had a greater need to understand our past.
The Kennewick Man ruling, upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004, went against Northwest Indian tribes, which hoped the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act would prevent scientific examination of the skeleton.
The court ruled Congress had intended NAGPRA to apply to remains only if a significant relationship could be shown to present-day tribes.
That's an appropriate interpretation of the law, one that protects the interests of science and still respects Indian culture.
Good riddance to archaeologists robbing the graves where the grandparents of contemporary Indians were buried.
And thank goodness for efforts to get human remains and cultural artifacts back to their original tribes.
But the Indians' claim to the 9,300-year-old Kennewick Man is based on the belief that no one other than tribal ancestors could have been in the Columbia Basin back then.
That can't be proved and may not be true.
Congress shouldn't base law on unproven assumptions about the ancient world. Too much is at stake.
Hastings' efforts to clarify that NAGPRA doesn't apply to human remains that can't be tied to modern tribes shouldn't be necessary.
In the past, Congress has ignored any efforts to change the act.
But now it's starting to look as if efforts to stop study of the next Kennewick Man will never go away.
Congress should adopt Hastings' proposal and clarify NAGPRA's limits.
The oldest skeletons found in the Americas are believed to be mostly related to the Ainu of Japan.
GGG Ping.
Humans are relatively mobile creatures and like most pack animals will push each other out of areas. The idea that the “native americans” were first is absurd. Their ancestors pushed someone else out.
What amount of time must past before Grave Robbing becomes Archeology?
It's now believed these items were left by EUROPEANS.
"The oldest human remains found in the Americas were recently "discovered" in the storeroom of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. Found in central Mexico in 1959, the five skulls were radiocarbon dated by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Mexico and found to be 13,000 years old. They pre-date the Clovis culture by a couple thousand years, adding to the growing evidence against the Clovis-first model for the first peopling of the Americas."
"Of additional significance is the shape of the skulls, which are described as long and narrow, very unlike those of modern Native Americans.
THOUSANDS..................
We’ve ALWAYS had a problem with illegal immigration..................
Surely by now ol’ Kenny has found his way to the happy hunting grounds and doesn’t care what anyone does with his bodily remains.
actually in this case and more it is the indians.
By concealing the fact the american indians were not in fact first OR alone, their casinos go poof in a legal smoke.
This is not about archeology OR grave robbing, this is about profits.
Don’t forget about oil in resources on indian reservations.
Not bad for a nomadic peoples with no concept of property. (remember the indians thought THEY were cheating the dutch)
But do you think I might end up with a casino of my own?
It seems to me that science should now have the tools to prove any European component in the genetic makeup of America's "natives". There would be a specific genetic marker shared with some modern day Europeans that wouldn't be shared with any Asians.
I always find it funy that the same libs who whine and bitch that the Europeans illegally stole this land from the native indians are the ones who want an unstaunched flow of Mexicans to invade us with no strings attached. If not wanting illegal immigrants to invade us makes us racists and xenophobes, then what do you call the indians who constantly complain that our ancestors stole their land?
-Joe
Unfortunately the Army Corps of Engineers, by burying the site, prevented scientists from learning much more from Kennewick Man that could have been of great value.
"To date, haplogroup X has not been unambiguously identified in Asia, raising the possibility that some Native American founders were of Caucasian ancestry."
thanks for the posting, Blam.
Do you hae a link to that recent map that showed DNA tracing of Amerindian ancestor crossing and then re-crossing the Bering Strait?
I forgot to put it on ‘Favorites’.
It is clear and obvious there were many migrations. The Maya of Yucatan peninusla are very different from the Plains Indians.
Plains people and the Woodland peoples must have more of the X and A2 lines.
I am assuming by ‘Ainu’ you mean the robust B lines.
They were Irish I tell you, now give me a casino.
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