← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 19649 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2005-08-15
2005-08-15 06:19 | User Profile
Monday, July 11, 2005
Scientists ponder who -- or what -- killed Kennewick Man
By TOM PAULSON SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
It's been nine years since they discovered the skeleton near the river, and the forensic scientists are finally getting started on this very cold case.
One clue: The stone spear point in the hip of the 9,300-year-old human remains known as Kennewick Man indicates the old guy had at least one enemy.
Douglas Owsley uses replicas of Kennewick Man's skull and pelvis bone to explain the 11-person scientific team's study of the 9,300-year-old bones.
But it's still not known if the ancient hunter-gatherer discovered in 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River fell there as a victim of foul play, a natural death in the wild or was buried by friends and family.
"Some of that information may be embedded in the bone," said Hugh Berryman, a forensic anthropologist from Nashville, Tenn.
Berryman, who specializes in getting bone fractures to reveal secrets, usually works on criminal cases. He's been called in to assist with unraveling the mystery of Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete human skeletons ever found in North America.
Scientists are studying the remains where they were ordered held by a federal judge -- at the University of Washington's Burke Museum.
Berryman is just one member of an 11-person team, led by renowned forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley of the Smithsonian Institution. They've been identifying and arranging the bone fragments -- nearly 400 pieces, as compared with the 206 intact bones of the human skeleton -- in an effort to determine the circumstances following death.
"Is this a burial or was he just silted over?" said Owsley. It's just one of many mysteries about this controversial collection of bones, he said, but resolving one unknown often helps lead them to the answers to other questions -- and to new questions.
"This is a rare scientific opportunity," Owsley said. What they may yet find out about Kennewick Man, he said, could add substantially to our knowledge of early Americans.
The scientists almost lost the opportunity. When the remains were discovered, several tribes -- the Yakama, Umatilla, Nez Perce and Colville -- claimed them as an ancestor under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was set to return the remains to the tribes for reburial when Owsley and other experts in the study of American prehistory filed a lawsuit, claiming that there was no scientific evidence to support the tribes' claim. Preliminary evidence suggested the remains' bone structure was more like that of an Asian than modern Native Americans.
The scientists won the legal battle last year, when a three-judge panel with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favor and allowed the study to go ahead. The tribes are now pressing Congress for changes in federal law that the scientists say could reverse the win in court and make all such remains once again unavailable for study.
Before examining the bone fragments, the scientists had the skull and pelvis (with the spear point in it) examined by a high-precision CT scanner. Using the digital data collected from some 1,200 scans, they asked a Nevada company called Data Point to exactly re-create the skull and bone fragments in clear plastic
"It allows us to look at both the internal and external structure," Owsley said. Having the bone pieces re-created in plastic, he noted, also allows them to work with them rather than handling the original bone as much.
While Owsley, Berryman and others work on the bones themselves, scientists such as geochemist Thomas Stafford from Wisconsin and Wayne Smith, a Texas expert in studying the waterlogged remains found in shipwrecks, are examining the soil, sediments and even algae found with the remains.
The team hasn't solved any mysteries yet and will work on this taphonomy phase through Friday.
"We're just trying to get the broad picture here," Owsley said. The next phase, he said, likely won't begin until early next year and include bringing in other experts to narrow the focus on specific questions of interest. P-I reporter Tom Paulson can be reached at 206-448-8318 or [email]tompaulson@seattlepi.com[/email].
[url]http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/232063_kennewick11.html[/url]
Kennewick Man News [url]http://www.newnation.org/NNN-kennewick-man.html[/url]
2005-08-15 19:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE]But it's still not known if the ancient hunter-gatherer discovered in 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River fell there as a victim of foul play, a natural death in the wild or was buried by friends and family.[/QUOTE]I know it's asking too much to expect reporters to understand syntax, but can this newspaper not afford an editor?
2005-08-15 19:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Faust]Preliminary evidence suggested the remains' bone structure was more like that of an Asian than modern Native Americans.[/QUOTE] I was under the impression that the bones' structure was Caucasoid. Is that incorrect?
2005-08-15 20:10 | User Profile
According to this [url=http://www.kennewick-man.com/kman/news/story/2921018p-2956110c.html]link[/url] he has Caucasian traits, but does not look like a modern European. But the reconstruction I saw looked an awful like Jean-Luc Picard.> Besides vintage, what some of the ancient bones have in common is this: The skulls don't resemble what some physical anthropologists would expect to find in the ancestors of American Indians.
Where they'd expect to see fairly flat, broad faces, for instance, they see narrow visages with deeper contours. The head shapes are long, not round. Cheekbones are not pronounced. The noses are prominent rather than small, with high rather than short bridges. The teeth tend to be flat in back, not shovel-shaped.
In sum, the skulls possess a surprising combination of what some scientists call Caucasoid traits. They're not Caucasian as white people look today; instead, they match some ancient Asian peoples who, in turn, resemble some early European peoples.
2005-08-16 05:06 | User Profile
The Caucasoid race is a precursor to the modern European Caucasians. Just as Mongoloid is to Asians and Negroid to Africans.
2005-08-16 07:16 | User Profile
Quantrill,
Yes he was a Caucasoid. This is just liberals trying to muddy the water. [QUOTE] I was under the impression that the bones' structure was Caucasoid. Is that incorrect?[/QUOTE]
Remember Asian is not a race. Both Caucasians and Mongoloid live in Asia.
His bone structure is East Asian Caucasian, like Ainu of Japan. But he was basicly not unlike a European from the standpoint of race. He looks like the British actor Patrick Stewart.
But I starting to wonder if the Ainu did not came form Europe by way of America say something like 10,000 years ago. It would explane why Caucasians were in Japan. I think there are now only about 2000 Ainu left.
[QUOTE]Based on measurements of the Kennewick skeleton, the National Park Service report states that the skeleton is biologically affiliated most closely with groups from Polynesia and the Ainu of Japan, a group indigenous to northern Japan who are physically different from most Japanese. Many archaeologists believe the Ainu are the descendents of a population that lived in many parts of south Asia thousands of years ago, and had some physical traits that are similar to Caucasians, such as wavy hair and thick facial hair. "The fact is, Caucasoid people used to be a much wider population," says Gill. "This can be seen in the Ainu of Japan. All of Japan, even just 3,000 years ago were bearded, white people." [/QUOTE]