Bothell archaeologist James Chatters, the first scientist to examine the skeleton, said the skull looked Caucasoid, not Native American. A facial reconstruction that bore a striking resemblance to Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (actor Patrick Stewart) of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, further inflamed members of local tribes, who argued that the remains were rightfully theirs under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. After eight years of litigation, a federal appeals court ruled in 2004 that Kennewick Mans extreme age made it impossible to establish a clear link to any existing Northwest tribes. A scientific team led by Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, won the right to study the skeleton, which is stored at the University of Washingtons Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. The results, including a new facial reconstruction based on more thorough analysis of the skull, were published last year in a 669-page book. Owsley, the lead author, told Northwest tribal members in 2012 that he remains convinced Kennewick Man was not Native American. In an interview last week, Owsley explained that he bases that conclusion on the shape of the skull, which doesnt look anything like the skulls of modern Native Americans. Its narrow brain case and prominent forehead more closely resemble Japans earliest inhabitants and people whose genetic roots are in Southeast Asia, not Siberia and other parts of Northeast Asia. His origins are going to go back to coastal Asia, Owsley said. That wouldnt preclude the possibility of some distant, shared ancestry with Native Americans, he added. But chemical analysis of the bones suggests Kennewick Man ate a lot of marine mammals, which means he probably spent most of his life along the coast of Alaska or British Columbia, not on the Columbia Plateau where his bones were discovered, Owsley said. With its ability to settle questions about lineage, DNA analysis has become one of the most powerful tools for the study of the ancient world, said Peter Lape, curator of archaeology at the Burke Museum. This is yet another case where genetics are really revolutionizing the way we think about ancestry and calling into question older scientific methods that rely on looking at the shape of bones, he said. Nevertheless, the majority of visitors he encounters at the museum still have the impression that Kennewick Man is Caucasian. That initial media storm from 1996 just kind of stuck, Lape said. Chatters, the man who kicked up that storm, changed his mind after studying the 13,000-year-old skeleton of a young girl discovered in an underwater cave in Mexico. As with Kennewick Man and other remains of the earliest prehistoric Americans, the shape of the girls skull was unusual. But DNA analysis proved that she shared a common ancestry with modern Native Americans, originating with the people who migrated into the land mass called Beringia beginning about 15,000 years ago. The result from Kennewick is the same one were getting from the other early individuals, Chatters said. Its what I expected. Read more at: phys.org/news/2015-01-kennewick-dna-native.html#jCp
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 15:42:58 +0000
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