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Rob Bonnichsen
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Claims for the Remains
Dr. Robson Bonnichsen
Director, Center for the Study of the First Americans
and Professor of Anthropology, Oregon State University
The significance of the Kennewick Man discovery should be understood in
light of scientific developments occurring in the field of First Americans
studies. For more than 40 years, most specialists seeking to explain
Paleo-American origins have supported the Clovis-first model. This model
proposes that the Americas were peopled once by a biological population from
Siberia possessing a single culture and language. It envisions that the
founding population moved across the Bering Land Bridge, traveled down the
Ice-free Corridor between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets, and
expanded into what is now the United States about 11,500 years ago. By use of a
new and efficient hunting technology, these early hunters and gatherers and
their immediate descendants were supposedly able to prosper and multiply as
they spread across North America and throughout South America in about a
thousand years.
Many believe that this initial colonization event explains the peopling of the
Americas. Over the next 11 millennia, descendants from this initial founding
population evolved and were responsible for the enormous diversity of
biological populations, cultural groups, and languages found among modern
Native Americans at the time of European contact.
First Americans specialists are now reconsidering the Clovis-first model in
light of new discoveries and scientific developments that suggest the peopling
of the Americas is much more complicated than originally anticipated. Many now
believe that the old, simple, unilinear evolutionary model is incorrect and
that a multilinear evolutionary model that envisions multiple colonization
events must replace it. Some specialists are now considering the possibility
that different colonizing groups from Asia and possibly Europe are required to
account for the biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity found at the
time of European contact and in the archeological record. Many specialists
believe that the future of First Americans research must focus on exploring the
validity of this new paradigm.
Many specialists in First Americans studies now suspect that not one but multiple colonization events occurred in America's earliest prehistory.
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New discoveries and scientific developments have caused many leading
specialists to question the validity of the Clovis-first model. In addition to
archeological research, genetics and skeletal studies are providing important
new lines of evidence for understanding Paleo-American origins. Advances in our
understanding of the archeological record suggest humans were in the Americas
well before Clovis. Important pre-Clovis data have been recovered from the
Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania; the Cactus Hill site, Virginia; the La
Sena site, Nebraska; the Monte Verde site, Chile; and the El Jobo site,
Venezuela. These and many others support the proposition that humans
were in the Americas before Clovis.
Other research suggests a series of regional cultures developed in the Americas
that were contemporary with Clovis. For example, the Stemmed Point from the
Great Basin, Snake River Plains, and the Plateau as well as the Goshen complex
from along the flanks of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains have radiocarbon
ages as early as those from Clovis sites. In summary, the picture that is
emerging from the archeological record indicates cultural variability
existed in the Americas by Clovis times.
Genetic research conducted by Theodore Schurr, Douglas C. Wallace, and
others provides compelling evidence for multiple colonization events. Modern
Native American populations fall into four mitochondrial DNA haplogroups, A-D,
and a fifth founding group is genetically linked to an Eurasian haplogroup X.
(Transmitted solely along the female line, mtDNA can help identify individuals
to haplogroups, or genetic groupings.) Haplogroups A, C, and D were brought to
the Americas perhaps as early as 30,000 years ago. A second immigration may
have brought haplogroup B possibly between 13,000 and 17,000 years ago, either
along the coast or overland, or both. An additional haplogroup X that shared
affinities to European or possibly Eurasian populations may have also entered
the Americas prior to the last glacial maximum and is absent in modern Siberian
populations. Ancient Beringian populations isolated during the last glacial
period evolved by post-glacial times into a large North Pacific Rim branch of
haplogroup A, which includes Eskimos and Na-Dene Indians.
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Kennewick Man, whose discovery in a riverbank in 1996 is recreated
in this still from the NOVA film "Mystery of the First Americans," is one of
the most complete early skeletons ever found in the Americas.
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Paleo-American researchers have opened a whole new intriguing field of
paleobiology research by taking advantage of advances in radiocarbon dating
such as carbon-14 accelerated mass spectrometry, which allows specialists to
precisely date tiny amounts of carbon from individual skeletons. Physical
anthropologists from North and South America have observed that Paleo-American
cranial forms older than 8,000 years have distinctive features that share more
similarities with Pacific Rim and southern Asian populations than with either
modern northeast Asian or modern Native American populations. One possible
interpretation of these data is that more recent groups replaced late Ice Age
peoples who had a discretely different ancestry.
Our knowledge of America's earliest biological and cultural heritage remains
amazingly thin. For example, there are fewer than 35 dated human skeletal
remains in the New World older than 8,000 years old. Most of these early
remains are fragmentary. The Kennewick Man skeleton is one of the most complete
early skeletons from the Americas, and its study by competent
scientists is essential to understanding his morphology, genetics, health,
diet, lifestyle, etc., and his relationship to other New and Old World
populations. Only through the study of important individual skeletons, such as
Kennewick Man, from different regions and different times will the scientific
community be able to build a coherent picture of America's past.
In First Americans studies, specialists can contribute to the scientific goal
of developing an understanding of America's earliest cultural and biological
heritage only through the comparative study of archeological remains, human
skeletons, and genetics. This research, based on the foundation of integrated
studies by multiple independent observers, promises to benefit all peoples by
providing knowledge about the diversity of our species, a mirror of our
ancestry, and America's contribution to world prehistory. It is imperative that
public decision-makers charged with implementing the Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 recognize the importance of
preservation and study of early human remains. Only through scientific study of
important discoveries such as Kennewick Man can an objective knowledge
America's rich and diverse past be developed and fully appreciated by all
communities who have a stake in the past.
Does Race Exist? |
Meet Kennewick Man
Claims for the Remains |
The Dating Game |
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