Chatters then noted something embedded in the hipbone. It proved to be a stone spearpoint, which seemed to clinch that the remains were prehistoric. He sent a bone sample off for carbon dating. The results: It was more than 9, years old. Thus began the saga of Kennewick Man, one of the oldest skeletons ever found in the Americas and an object of deep fascination from the moment it was discovered. It is among the most contested set of remains on the continents as well.
Now, though, after two decades, the dappled, pale brown bones are at last about to come into sharp focus, thanks to a long-awaited, monumental scientific publication next month co-edited by the physical anthropologist Douglas Owsley, of the Smithsonian Institution.
Owsley, Richard L. Jantz] on Amazon. Almost from the day of its accidental discovery along the banks of the Columbia River in Washington State in July The book recounts the history of discovery, presents a complete inventory of the bones and explores every angle of what they may reveal. Three chapters are devoted to the teeth alone, and another to green stains thought to be left by algae.
The storm of controversy erupted when the Army Corps of Engineers, which managed the land where the bones had been found, learned of the radiocarbon date. The corps immediately claimed authority—officials there would make all decisions related to handling and access—and demanded that all scientific study cease.
Floyd Johnson protested, saying that as county coroner he believed he had legal jurisdiction. He has examined well over 10, sets of human remains during his long career. He had helped identify human remains for the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and various police departments, and he had worked on mass graves in Croatia and elsewhere.
He helped reassemble and identify the dismembered and burned bodies from the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
Owsley is also a specialist in ancient American remains. But corps attorneys showed that federal law did, in fact, give them jurisdiction over the remains. The tribes demanded the bones for reburial. We do not believe that our people migrated here from another continent, as the scientists do. The corps made it clear that, after a monthlong public comment period, the tribal coalition would receive the bones.
The tribes had good reason to be sensitive. The early history of museum collecting of Native American remains is replete with horror stories. In the 19th century, anthropologists and collectors looted fresh Native American graves and burial platforms, dug up corpses and even decapitated dead Indians lying on the field of battle and shipped the heads to Washington for study.
But in the case of Kennewick, Owsley argued, there was no evidence of a relationship with any existing tribes. The skeleton lacked physical features characteristic of Native Americans. In the weeks after the Army engineers announced they would return Kennewick Man to the tribes, Owsley went to work.
They would never return a phone call. I kept expressing an interest in the skeleton to study it—at our expense. All we needed was an afternoon.
But the corps indicated it had made up its mind. Owsley began telephoning his colleagues. So Owsley and several of his colleagues found an attorney, Alan Schneider. Schneider contacted the corps and was also rebuffed.
Owsley suggested they file a lawsuit and get an injunction. Owsley assembled a group of eight plaintiffs, prominent physical anthropologists and archaeologists connected to leading universities and museums. But no institution wanted anything to do with the lawsuit, which promised to attract negative attention and be hugely expensive. They would have to litigate as private citizens. And efforts were made.
Working like mad, Schneider and litigating partner Paula Barran filed a lawsuit. With literally hours to go, a judge ordered the corps to hold the bones until the case was resolved. When word got out that the eight scientists had sued the government, criticism poured in, even from colleagues. The head of the Society for American Archaeology tried to get them to drop the lawsuit. Some felt it would interfere with the relationships they had built with Native American tribes.
But the biggest threat came from the Justice Department itself. Stanford, a husky man with a full beard and suspenders, had roped in rodeos in New Mexico and put himself through graduate school by farming alfalfa. They were no pushovers. But both anthropologists refused to withdraw, and the director of the National Museum of Natural History at the time, Robert W.
The Justice Department backed off. Owsley and his group were eventually forced to litigate not just against the corps, but also the Department of the Army, the Department of the Interior and a number of individual government officials. As scientists on modest salaries, they could not begin to afford the astronomical legal bills. Schneider and Barran agreed to work for free, with the faint hope that they might, someday, recover their fees.
The lawsuit dragged on for years. In the storage area where the bones were and are being kept at the Burke Museum, records show there have been wide swings in temperature and humidity that, the scientists say, have damaged the specimen. Somewhere in the move to Battelle, large portions of both femurs disappeared. It even went so far as to give Johnson a lie detector test; after several hours of accusatory questioning, Johnson, disgusted, pulled off the wires and walked out.
The mystery of how they got there has never been solved. The scientists asked the corps for permission to examine the stratigraphy of the site where the skeleton had been found and to look for grave goods. Even as Congress was readying a bill to require the corps to preserve the site, the corps dumped a million pounds of rock and fill over the area for erosion control, ending any chance of research. I asked Schneider why the corps so adamantly resisted the scientists.
Ultimately, the scientists won the lawsuit. The judge ordered the corps to make the specimen available to the plaintiffs for study. James Chatters, working on contract with the Benton County coroner, thought that the bones might not be Native American. The results indicated an age older than 9, years, making The Ancient One among the oldest and most complete skeletons found in North America.
Subsequent research on the bones indicated that the skeleton is between 8,—8, years old. Shortly after the remains were discovered, a group of scholars sued the federal government—representing the U.
NAGPRA, passed in , provides legal protections for Native American human remains, including their return to tribal communities if the tribes can prove they are related to the remains.
The scientists argued that the remains were not proven to be related to present-day tribes, therefore they should not be subject to NAGPRA, and should be available to the scientific community for study.
Several Washington and Oregon tribes joined the Federal Government in defending the suit. Therefore, The Ancient One remained under the control of the U.
Army Corps of Engineers, and scientific study by the plaintiffs was allowed to take place. The Burke was contracted by the Northwestern Division, United States Army Corps of Engineers to provide curatorial services for the remains, which included providing a secure environment for the remains and associated records. After the ruling, the plaintiffs and their colleagues made three visits to the Burke Museum to carry out scientific research on the remains.
Representatives of some of the tribes involved in the case also visited the remains to conduct ceremonies, and remained committed to having The Ancient One repatriated. In September , Dr. Douglas Owsley, Smithsonian physical anthropologist and one of the plaintiffs in the case, shared his morphology based findings that indicated that the skeleton was not of Native American affinity, and may have been more closely related to circumpacific groups such as the Ainu and Polynesians.
In June , University of Copenhagen geneticist Dr. The team compared DNA extracted from a hand bone to worldwide genomic data, including the Ainu and Polynesians. They found that The Ancient One is more closely related to modern Native Americans than any other living population. Simultaneously, U. The remains were reburied in a private ceremony and location, according to the traditions of the tribes.
All Sections. About Us. B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. Times Store. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options. This photo shows a plastic casting of the skull from the Kennewick Man. By Alene Tchekmedyian Staff Writer.
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