Friday, February 06, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: A victory for science

Study of Kennewick Man may proceed

Wednesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck a blow for common sense and science over political correctness by allowing researchers to study the 9,300-year-old remains of the Kennewick Man.

The ruling, if it stands, will give scientists an incomparable opportunity to help them learn more about the lives and migration patterns of our prehistoric ancestors.

The controversy arose because the discovery of Kennewick Man -- and also the recent revelation that the similar Spirit Cave Mummy found near Fallon is 9,400 years old -- threatens to topple the conventional wisdom on prehistoric cultures and undermine the belief of Native Americans that they are the continent's original settlers.

A pair of teenagers stumbled across the ancient man's skull -- which has many Caucasoid features -- on the north bank of the Columbia River in Washington in 1996. A local coroner suspected the remains might be a few hundred years old, until radiocarbon dating confirmed the skeleton belonged to someone who walked the Earth nearly 10,000 years ago.

The problem is, "white" people -- the skull bears some resemblance to Patrick Stewart, who played Capt. Picard in the "Star Trek" series -- weren't supposed to inhabit the American West back then. It's long been accepted that the natives of the day had flatter, Mongoloid characteristics as do Native Americans.

Scientists legitimately wanted to know how that man arrived in the Pacific Northwest ... and where his journey may have originated.

The absence of Mongoloid features, however, didn't stop five contemporary tribes from claiming the remains as their own under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Some Indian representatives even questioned the "Eurocentric" standards of those who were brazen enough to declare that "evidence" should trump the oral histories of the tribes.

This is nothing more than mysticism. But in 2000, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt wilted in the face of political correctness and ordered the remains delivered to the tribes for interment.

A lawsuit filed by anthropologists and other researchers followed. Fortunately, the 9th Circuit ruled that the Indian repatriation law doesn't cover Kennewick Man, because his features bear no relationship to any "existing tribe or people, or culture to be considered Native American," as the law requires. The remains are now set to go to the Smithsonian Institution for study.

For the revelations such discoveries provide about the origins of us all, this lucid decision should stand.