The 9,000-year-old Kennewick Man skeleton is set to be reburied after decades of research and wrangling:
Once the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had control over the Columbia River property, caught wind of the bones' ancient age, the agency demanded the remains. A local tribe, the Umatilla, had claimed the Kennewick Man as an ancestor; the Native American group wanted to lay the skeleton to rest according to custom. Chatters, who had teamed up with paleoanthropologists like the Smithsonian Institute's renowned bone expert Douglas Owsley, resisted.
Thus began a debate that would last for 20 years. In one corner were the scientists, who over the years have wanted to sequence the Kennewick Man's DNA and scrape his molars to see what he ate. Burial without first letting scientists analyze the bones, paleontologist Thomas Stafford told the Denver Post in 1997, "would be like burning the great library of Alexandria."
In the other corner was a coalition of five Native American groups — the Nez Perce, Yakama, Wanapum and Colville tribes, along with the Umatilla, who refer to the Kennewick Man as the Ancient One. Their legal footing, they say, is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act — legislation enacted in 1990 as a way to return cultural items kept by federal agencies and museum collections.
A genetic test on the remains found that the Kennewick Man is closely related to Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest and not the ancient Japanese Ainu tribe as some anthropologists had argued in court. The Army Corps of Engineers announced on Wednesday that it would coordinate with the coalition of Native American tribes to bury the remains.
Also at Reuters.
Previously: DNA Testing Confirms Kennewick Man's Ties to Native Americans
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A genetic analysis published in Nature has revealed that the Kennewick Man, a 9,000-year-old Paleoamerican specimen, has genetic ties to Native American tribes.
Scientists extracted DNA from a hand bone, and compared his genome with genetic data from around the world. Study author Prof Eske Willerslev, from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, said: "The first important question we tried to address was to what contemporary population is Kennewick Man most closely related to. And it is very clear that the genome sequence shows he is most closely related to contemporary Native Americans. "In fact we also got Ainu genome-wide data from a Japanese chief and we also had Polynesian (data) for comparison, as well as what is available across the world, and Kennewick Man did not show any significance in terms of having more Ainu or Polynesian DNA than other contemporary Native Americans. "From that perspective, I think we can conclude very clearly he is most clearly related to contemporary Native Americans."
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday May 01 2016, @03:00PM
The Native Americans coalition then proceeded to celebrate the victory with the motto: KENNEWICK MAN IS PEOPLE!
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 01 2016, @09:45PM
Kennewick Lives Matter!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @04:42PM
You've clearly never been to the Tri-Cities. Richland lives, maybe.
(Score: 2) by Username on Sunday May 01 2016, @08:23PM
If you find human remains, pretend you didn’t see them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fishybell on Sunday May 01 2016, @09:06PM
So true.
During highway construction in my old town they discovered [heraldextra.com] a tombstone dating to the early 1900's. The supervisor had it loaded into the back of a truck and went to a cement recyclers to have it destroyed that day. There was a big kerfuffle, accusations were made, people left their jobs (the person who dug it up who then protested against having it destroyed), but construction never missed a beat. I'm guessing that supervisor got a bonus.
(Score: 1) by milsorgen on Sunday May 01 2016, @10:03PM
Certainly should be respected but when there is bona fide value in study then that should take precedence. Especially in this case, no one could claim direct descent from the man there for no one should of had any kind of direct claim on the remains.
On the Oregon Coast, born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days...
(Score: 3, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday May 01 2016, @10:56PM
Umatilla religious leader Armand Minthorn was unimpressed with the researchers’ entreaty...“We already know our history. It is passed on to us through our elders and through our religious practices.”
Well, OK then. There's obviously nothing new to be learned about the Umatilla people.