Next Kennewick Man Will Need Protection

Tri-city Herald ^ | 11-7-2007

[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.

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks Blam. That Adovasio book got much more interesting as I've approached the end. His view on NAGPRA is nearly identical to mine, so I'm probably just basking in the light of my own ego. But anyway, his anecdote about that Pennsylvania ossuary might be illuminating here. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are Blam, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[Coyoteman]

Here is a good article:

Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders

[ZULU]

Well, even that is irrelevant.

Most Amerindian tribes moved around a lot. To assume that a tribe currently or even historically occupying an area in the U.S. was there several thousand years ago is patently absurd.

And, as the law specifically states, it was designed to protect “graves” of immediate ancestors or relatives, not archeological remains.

[ZULU]

I guess it is left ot common sense. I’d say anrything older than several hundred years is an archeological remain.

[Mr. Quarterpanel]

I think that the relationship to the Ainu is one of the most significant discoveries and could add much to the puzzle regarding who were the first Americans.

[ZULU]

Genetic studies have indicated that most genetic markers are tied to people living in Central Asia.

They have also indicated that there might have been contributions to the Amerindian gene pool from Europe and Africa.

[muawiyah]

There's a marker they call "X-factor" that North American Indians share with the Sa'ami and the Berbers. Some groups have as many as 25% of their members sharing the factor (Iriquois, Chippewa) and all have at least 3% sharing it.

South American Indians do not have the factor.

I really don't think the Sa'ami or the Berbers made it to East Asia.

[muawiyah]

What is hypothesized to have happened 6,000 years ago (which is several thousand years AFTER Clovis culture was pretty much destroyed by what seems to have been a comet that hit Canada) really doesn’t change the legal basis of the treaties between the Indians and the United States.

[blam]

You'll like this article:

Ina Clan - Haplogroup B

[blam]

Human DNA Migration Patterns

"The first migration into the Americas was about 26-34 thousand years ago, the second was about 12-15 thousand years ago, and the third was about 7-9 thousand years ago. The data also demonstrates a possible 4th migration the actually took place about 15 thousand years ago when Scandinavian Vikings crossed the Atlantic and mixed with Native Americans that crossed the Bering Strait (haplogroup X)."

[Wallace T.]

There is more at stake here than treaties between the Indian nations and the United States or the individual states (treaties in the Eastern states were often between a particular tribe and a colonial or state government). The dominant cultural outlook in academia is profoundly anti-Western and anti-Christian. European civilization is projected as evil and inhumane, and the culture of the Indians is believed to be a variant of Rousseau’s concept of the Noble Savage. There is no certainty as to how the earliest human settlers of this hemisphere perished. If the Northeast Asian migrants acted like the Israelites did in Canaan or the Angles and Saxons did in Britain, the earlier inhabitants would have been subject to genocide and slavery, with the few survivors driven to safer havens. In other words, the Northeast Asians of several thousand years ago did the same thing to the earlier inhabitants as the Europeans did to them in the 16th through 19th Centuries. Any use of their society as an ideal contrast to the supposed evils of Euro-American culture would be seriously compromised.

[Coyoteman]

One update on that map:

There is now evidence that at least one of the early coastal migrations, Alaska to the tip of South America, included the D4h3 founding group (see the article I linked a few posts above). It was a different D (D1) that went inland.

[blam]

" If the Northeast Asian migrants acted like the Israelites did in Canaan or the Angles and Saxons did in Britain, the earlier inhabitants would have been subject to genocide and slavery, with the few survivors driven to safer havens."

Recent DNA studies have dispelled the idea that the Anglo-Saxons committed any sort of genocide in the British Isles.

See this book: Origins Of The British for the details.

"Now Stephen Oppenheimer’s groundbreaking genetic research has revealed that the ‘Anglo-Saxon invasion’ contributed only a tiny fraction to the English gene pool. "

[blam]

[Wallace T.]

If what Oppenheimer states is true, then the written histories on both the English and British/Welsh sides describing mass slaughter in the 5th and 6th Centuries are inaccurate. Additionally, I have read other information that indicates a great deal of genetic difference between the English and the Welsh. The general observation in Britain also indicates a greater degree of fair hair and eyes in the eastern parts, with darker hair and eyes more common in the west, especially Wales and Cornwall. This would seem to agree with the concept that a great amount of German and Scandinavian ancestry can be found in eastern England and Scotland, while the older inhabitants, perhaps with ties to northern Spain and western France, are better represented in western Britain.

[blam]

"If what Oppenheimer states is true, then the written histories on both the English and British/Welsh sides describing mass slaughter in the 5th and 6th Centuries are inaccurate."

Correct.

English And Welsh Are Races Apart

I highly recommend Oppenheimer's book.

Also, Bryan Sykes latest: Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland is a goodbook.

If you choose between the two, choose Oppenheimer's.

[blam]

Myths Of British Ancestry

"Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands".(Stephen Oppenheimer)

[muawiyah]

Actually, except for some dumba$$e$ in the Middle East most of your barbarian tribes were into killing warriors, enslaving the boys and non-warrior men (who were probably slaves already), and putting the gals in the sack to make more babies ~ and clean up the place a bit.

Occasionally you'd have somebody like The Great Law Giver come along and convince the Iriquois to organize a Confederation, and to use their slave tribes as tax farms.

Life was tough and cheap labor was hard to come by. As recent genetic research has revealed, the Angel and Saxon invaders who conquered Brittain really didn't exterminate the original people ~ they're still there ~ they just think they're English these days.

Compounding the confusion, William the Conqueror brought in tens of thousands of Bretons from Brittany to England, to replenish the blood-lines anyway.

[muawiyah]

Blam, "Scandinavian Vikings" 14,000 years ago?

The Indo-Europeans were still an undifferentiated mass over in the Middle East and along the Mediterranean.

The Refugia in what is now France and Spain, was the source of the people who crossed over on the winter ice in the North Atlantic. They are NOT the source of the Vikings who were Indo-European people speaking Gothic.

The original population of Fenno-Scandia were non-Indo-European people and they spoke a number of non-Indo-European languages.

Can you contact that guy to correct his error.

[muawiyah]

BTW, "European Culture" means different things to different people. Most of my own people came here as refugees FROM that culture, or as slaves of that culture.

I think they ended up creating a new culture. For one thing it has no hereditary nobility and we look down on people who want to turn notables or politicians into the equivalent of nobility.