Kennewick man..

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Kennewick Man was laid to rest alongside a river more than 9,000 years ago, buried by other people, a leading forensic scientist said Thursday.

The skeleton, one of the oldest and most complete ever found in North America, has been under close analysis since courts sided with researchers in a legal battle with Indian tribes in the Northwest who wanted the remains found near the Columbia River reburied without study.

Douglas Owsley, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, discussed his findings in remarks prepared for delivery Thursday evening at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Seattle.

"We know very little about this time period," Owsley said in a telephone interview. "This is a rare opportunity to try and reconstruct the life story of this man. ... This is his opportunity to tell us what life was like during that time."

Researchers have disagreed over whether Kennewick Man was buried by other people or swept up in a flood and encased in sediment.

Owsley concluded the man was deliberately buried, between two and three feet deep, his body placed in the grave, head slightly higher than feet, hands placed at his sides.

The location was riverside, with the body parallel to the river and head pointing upstream.

Using an industrial CT scanner, Owsley was able to study the skeleton in fine sections and also get a better look at a spear or dart point imbedded in Kennewick Man's hip.

The point has previously been described as a Cascade point, typical of the region, but Owsley said that is not the case. Cascade points tend to have two pointed ends and are sometimes serrated, he said, while the point in Kennewick Man has a pointed end and a stem.

The spear or dart entered the man from the front, moving downward at a 77-degree angle, Owsley said. Previous analysis had indicated it might have hit from the back, he noted.

The point was not the cause of death, he said, saying, "This is a healed injury."

"There was no clear indication in the skeleton of cause of death," Owsley said. Kennewick Man had undergone "a lot of injuries, this guy was tough as nails."

There are three types of fractures in the bones, Owsley said, ones the man suffered in his lifetime and which had healed; fractures that occurred after burial from aging of the bones and the ground settling, and breaks that occurred when the skeleton was unearthed.

A team of 20 forensic scientists has been studying the skeleton, he said, and have concluded that the skull doesn't match those of Indian tribes living in the area.

"We know very little about this time period. Who the people were that were the earliest people that came to America," Owsley said. "We are finding out they were coming thousands of years earlier than we had thought," arriving not just over the Bering Strait but by boats and other means.

"This is a very rare discovery. You could count on your fingers the number of relatively complete skeletons from this time period," Owsley said.

Following discovery of the bones in 1996, the Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce and Colville tribes urged that the skeleton be reburied without scientific study. They argued that the bones were covered under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Scientists sued for a chance to study the remains and a federal court ruled there was no link between the skeleton and the tribes.

I remember this guy. It was a big story that never got covered. When they found the body, an anthropologist was right there and said immidiatly it was a white guy. The indians are supposed to be the only natives to his land, so they tried to take the body and burn it. Thankfully it was saved. Clinton then spent 3million tax dollars to have the Army Engineers bury it under water so that no1 could study it, for the obvious reason of pleasing the indians. I think it was recovered a few years later to be studied again. (I remember reading about clinton's sabatoge, but I dont remember if he really buried it, or just planned to, before the court case ruled it wasnt indian.)

The indians seemed to be worried that a body of a white man pre-dating the indians arrival and having an arrow head in his hip, might lead people to beleive that the "native" americans actually invaded north america and killed off the real natvies - white man.

Originally posted by ViolatoRThe indians seemed to be worried that a body of a white man pre-dating the indians arrival and having an arrow head in his hip, might lead people to beleive that the "native" americans actually invaded north america and killed off the real natvies - white man.

I think it's a little early to jump to that kind of conclusion. Do you even have any evidence that this is a "white man"? Nor should this kind of research be used to justify the deaths of Indians by colonization. If it were, then I'm afraid that many other nations would share the same fate. If we go back far enough, maybe we can even say that australopithecenes deserve to wipe out all those nasty Homo sapiens.

Anyway....I thought this was an interesting point in the article.

Scientists sued for a chance to study the remains and a federal court ruled there was no link between the skeleton and the tribes.

Apparently, there have been many other cases where Indians have claimed the remains of bodies even though scientists have expressed concern over the exact link between the bodies and the Indians. This is sad indeed that scientist can be hindered in this way.

"A team of 20 forensic scientists has been studying the skeleton, ...and have concluded that the skull doesn't match those of Indian tribes living in the area."

When I first read about this many moons ago; they first thought it was a pioneer who got attacked, but after dating the bones they realized it was much older. Older than the "native" indians.

So, to answer your question, no I dont personally have the evidence with me proving its a white person's skeleton, but I've been lead to believe that its not an indian's, based on what I read.

www.wnd.com...
When two college students found a 9,200-year-old skeleton on the Columbia River in Washington State in July 1996, initial examination seemed to suggest the bones were more Caucasian than Native American. To scientists, this skeleton, which came to be known as Kennewick Man, was a major new find that raised important issues regarding the genetic ancestry of the earliest North Americans. To resolve the matter, they wanted to test the bones for DNA. But to some Indian groups, such testing was not only a religious outrage, it was a blatant political effort to weaken Indian claims to be the original native Americans and they demanded that the bones be re-buried at once. After several years of controversy, Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt decided last week to let the DNA testing proceed.

Wiki
The Umatilla argue that their origin beliefs say that their people have been present on the lands since the dawn of time, so a government holding that Kennewick Man is not Native American is tantamount to the government's rejecting their beliefs.

Prior to detailed scientific analysis, a digital reconstruction of the skull revealed what some called Caucasoid features. Press coverage frequently noted a similarity in appearance to Shakespearean and Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart. (Hehehe, arnt there time travel episodes of star trek!? omg, its real!)

Further research has shown that Kennewick Man is possibly not Caucasian at all, however. Rather, some researchers now suggest he most closely resembles Polynesian or Ainu peoples. This suggests that there may have been an immigration wave across the Pacific to the Americas, as well as across the Bering Strait land bridge. DNA analysis, which some Native American groups oppose, could help resolve this mystery, should there be enough left intact to extract from the bones.

I hope the DNA research works, giving us a better view of early America, and the various cultures which may have mingled here long long ago.. the end.