Kennewick Man

Washington State’s Kennewick River, the skeleton of a most unusual murder victim was found in 1991. Since their discovery, his remains have been hotly contested between scientists anxious to study them and Indian rights activists, supported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The man to whom they belonged to 90 centuries ago was Caucasian, and therein lies the controversy.

Until little more than 500 years ago, only the ancestors of Native Americans were believed to be the sole inhabitants of our continent. But this long-held assumption has been called into question by the mere existence of the anomalous stranger. He was probably not alone. In the October 2004 issue of Ancient American, James J. Daly highlighted some of the serious ramifications generated by this contentious find.

Media can influence public opinion and provide support for politicians in the form of established authority. If the experts have said it, then it must be true. In this light, it would be of interest to know how the controversy of the Kennewick Man has been presented in books, internet, newspapers, and educational documentaries. This review covers three such presentations: What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee, by Jonathan Marks, The Journey of Man, by Spencer Wells, and a documentary film.

The Real Eve narrated by actor Danny Glover. All three mediums have misrepresented the evidence regarding the discovery of a skeleton in North America that does not conform to the physical features of indigenous peoples or Native Americans. There has been a great deal of reluctance by many in the soft sciences of anthropology, archeology, psychology, and sociology to accept this prima facia evidence of other people’s arriving in the NewWorld before the Paleo-Indians. The findings do not agree with their preconceived sociopolitical ideologies.

Some of these obstructive academics have been called radical scientists. The most important feature of radical scientists is that they support good science and oppose bad science. However, this support has nothing to do with the accuracy, precision, or repeatability of the science in question. Whether the science is “good” for the people? Their science is a wholly relative and subjective viewpoint and is much more sociopolitical than scientific.

Facts are not important; as the intention is. They know better than you as to what you should know. The best way to understand their approach to science is to quote Jack Nicholson’s famous line in the movie, “A Few Good Men”, “The truth? You can’t handle the truth. It was important to define the radical scientist viewpoint because it explains the position on Kennewick Man taken in the book written by Jonathan Marks, which is ostensibly about chimpanzees and humans.

Marks is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In his book, Marks criticizes the molecular genetics that has been used to make the case that we are the same as apes. His view “Apes” are not men and vice versa. But this critique is a smokescreen for other agendas in the book, including racism in science, genetic determinism, sociobiology, Human Genome Projects, and Kennewick Man.

Marks discusses the ape/human business inland out of the first 50 pages of the book, after which, he adds some-thing here and there about apes and humans. However, his strategy is that if you criticize molecular results and techniques in ape-human comparisons, then you can further extend this critique to the genetic studies regarding the diversity of populations or subdivisions of mankind. A question arises as to the motive for this book.

It almost seems that the main reason that Marks wrote this book may be for the 19 pages covering Kennewick Man to support the Native American claim on the ancient remains. The ape business might have been somewhat new and different, but it is only covered in about one-fourth of the book’s contents.

All the anti-race material is old news and can be found elsewhere, and is included in other publications, including those by Marks. He admits that he received a National Science Foundation grant to help with the formation of the book. From my own understanding of federal granting agencies, it is highly unusual that NSF would support the writing of a book that is only one person’s opinion and without new research data.

There is a suspicion here that some hidden hands were involved in helping to get this book out to create an “expert’s” view to be used in future legal battles, or to persuade the public to be sympathetic to the claims of the Native Americans. A further indication is that it’s badly written in places that make it look like it was rushed into print without much editorial input. The critical, balanced argument is lacking.

Topics such as human homosexuality drift in from nowhere. But from a literary standpoint, the worst offense is the often-puzzling metaphors and analogies that Marks sprinkles throughout his text. However, the chapter attacking the Great Apes Project and human rights for chimps is worthwhile reading. It is highly entertaining and from an animal rights perspective, is very politically incorrect.

Marks’ approach to Kennewick Man can be summarized by one of his chapter’s sub-titles: Give Back Kennewick Man. Marks also summarizes his findings by saying, “Kennewick Man has different significance for the two groups that want his remains, and his importance as a symbol to Native Americans, I would argue, out-weighs this importance to the scientists as a basis for thoughtless and irresponsible speculation. Kennewick Man lay at the crossroads of the sciences and the humanities. He represented a confrontation between the politics of identity and human rights, on the one hand, and an archaic and transgressive science on the other hand. “In other words, science should be subservient to personal feelings.

Marks does not consider it important in his treatment of the Kennewick Man that the skeleton does not resemble that of Native Americans. Just give it back. It’s the law. Something is being missed here. No one, not Marks, physical anthropologists, judges, or Native Americans, seems to realize that a case for human rights can be made for Kennewick Man, because it would be unjust to return his remains to the descendants of those who killed him.

One of Marks’ favorite ad hominess is to call someone who doesn’t agree with him a “pseudoscientist,” but it is he who may be the real pseudo scientist. In one paragraph, he almost gloats at the failure of one scientist to extract usable DNA from the remains, as though this was a triumph of no discovery. Intact DNA is almost impossible to extract from ancient remains.

That it was done in one case of a Neanderthal skeleton was remarkable. Marks’ worst anti-intellectual comment, however, was that it was only a single skeleton, and single skeletons don’t mean much. Marks were being disingenuous, or better yet, duplicitous. Finding a piece of skull, finger, tooth, humerus, or any part of ancient remains has often been hailed as monumental discoveries when unearthed in other parts of the world. What Marks fails to say is that finding a complete 9,000-year-old skeleton is a remarkable piece of good luck.

Then there is that inconvenient (for Marksists, anyway) Paleo-Indian spear point embedded in Kennewick Man’s pelvis. Being slightly droll, Marks makes it clear that he disdains those scientists who claim that races or distinct human populations don’t exist and then do research to find differences that prove otherwise. This would describe Spencer Wells per-featly. Wells has been searching for genetic markers that can identify and separate various groups of humans.

His excuse to avoid being called a “racist” is that the evolution and migrations of humans through-out unrecorded history can be traced through such markers, and such data is race-neutral (as long as you don’t call the differentiated groups “race”—Wells prefers the term “clans”). Wells, as has Marks, has become a collator and interpreter of other scientists’ data by writing books and producing documentaries, such as the one that inspired this current book.

In the Journey of Man, Wells has used the available genetic data to explain the journey of man. The genetic markers do tend to correlate with other evidence from anatomy, linguistics, and cultural artifacts. Wells is a molecular anthropologist, although he would probably more prefer the termolecular geneticist.

He would appear to be straightforward in his presentations, depending more on scientific facts then emotional outbursts. However, his background may still be somewhat suspect, because Wells was at Harvard, which is the epicenter of radical bioscience in the form of Leontine, Gould, and Montague. Wells did work later with Cavalli–Sforza at Stanford, who pioneered the field of genetic markers in diverse human groups. Such research now has the appellation of being politically incorrect, which explains Jonathan Marks’s crusty comment.

One needs to have a somewhat sophisticated grasp of the field of genetic diversity to recognize that Wells is also some-what of a radical scientist, although much more muted than Marks. Where Wells tips his hand is in the short (very short) discussion of the migrations into the New World by people other than Native Americans. Wells covers the presumed first two waves into North America as indicated by genetic and corroborative linguistic evidence, the latter being from exhaustive studies by Joseph Greenberg.

For Kennewick Man, however, he merely says, “Furthermore, because Siberians and Upper Paleolithic Europeans initially came from the same central Asian populations, they probably started out looking very similar to each other. Kennewick Man, as a likely descendant of the first migration from Siberia to the New World, may have retained his central Asian features which could be interpreted as ‘Caucasoid.’ In fact, many early American skulls look more European than those of today’s modern Native Americans, suggesting that their appearance has changed over time.

The more Mongoloid, or East Asian, the appearance of modern Native Americans may have originated in the second wave of migration, carrying M130 (a genetic marker) from East Asia. “A few caveats are in order here. First, the use of “probably,” likely,” “may have,” “could be,” and “suggesting,” means that the hypotheses presented are “just-so stories,” which may or may not have long-term validity. Second the emphasizing of “Caucasoid “indicates doubt about the physical description for Kennewick man.

At the beginning of the same paragraph Wells says, “As for other migrations, from Europe or Australia, there is no compelling evidence. “Unfortunately, if Kennewick Man had not been discovered, then any suggestion of “Caucasoid” being in the New World before Native Americans would have been even less than “compelling” to Wells. Also, because Europeans and central Asians were one and the same at that time, why not use a designation of “Euro-Asians?” Unless one should be trying to avoid using the term European in any fashion.

One has to wonder if Wells is of the “Anybody but Europeans” school. In any case, the real question is, who was in North America first: the Caucasoid or the Monoploids third caveat is that it must be understood that genetic markers differentiating diverse human groups are not easy to find. A good example relevant to this discussion can be found with breeds of dogs.

Would anyone doubt that an Irish wolfhound is different from a Chihuahua, or a dachshund from a bulldog, a bloodhound from a Saint Bernard? Nevertheless, it was not until 2003 that researchers were able to find markers that would differentiate breeds of dogs, and then only for a few breeds. Molecular genetics, in terms of markers, is still in its infancy. However, new techniques will undoubtedly comfort in the future that will clarify and expand existing information.

This is what the radical scientists are afraid of. So, as suggested by Marks, get rid of the evidence before these new techniques become available. Lastly, the comment that Native Americans may have changed their features because Kennewick Man sounds positively Lamarckian (or superficial) and deserves more speculative discussion as to how this may have occurred than what Wells was willing to give us.

In fairness, one does have to understand that Wells is speaking as a molecular geneticist, about genetic markers, and not as a physical or cultural anthropologist. But, as do his colleagues, he will cherry-pick data from other fields, when it suits him.

The last media example is a documentary called The Real Eve, narrated by Danny Glover. In this presentation, the history of the evolution of mankind and its spread over the earth is well documented and there appears to be little favoritism here, allowing one to agree or disagree, depending upon your own perspective, except for Kennewick Man. Kennewick Man is covered and his differences from Native Americans are mentioned as his earlier arrival in the New World. However, the graphic depiction of Kennewick Man’s death in a dynamic chase with Kennewick Man fleeing Native Americans was misleading.

The “Indians” were dressed as Plains Indians with warpaint, buckskin clothes, and feathers in their hair. I wondered how the advisors to this production knew that this was how “Indians “dressed 9,000 ago. Now, this may seem to be a small item, but when the cameras caught up to Kennewick Man, laying injured in the grass, on his back, he was dressed in the same fashion, and his face was that of a Native American. It would have been very easy for the producers to show differentiation. The skeletal remains of Kennewick Manure most closely related to the Ainu on the island of Hokkaido.

The Japanese call them the “Hairy Ones.” What distinguishes them from the less hirsute Japanese. Giving Kennewick Man a beard would have then identified him as being much different from his pursuers. It was obvious that the people making this documentary didn’t want to associate Native Americans with beating up on an unfortunate indigenous victim. Frankly, from the way the action was presented, I couldn’t tell the players without a scorecard. Another oddity, for which I am awaiting an answer, is the spear-point. In the documentary, the spear was thrown at Kennewick Man.

I have bow hunted and taught human anatomy. I find it difficult to believe that a thrown spear would have enough force to be embedded in the pelvic bone of the victim. A more reasonable scenario would be that his pursuers had caught up with him and stabbed him at close range, while he was lying down, hard enough to penetrate bone. If my “just-so story” has merit, it means that he was viciously finished off, on the spot, and had other more lethal soft-tissue wounds that probably killed him in the end. Those wounds would not necessarily be evident from the skeletal remains.

These two books and a documentary run the gamut from “Be nice, get rid of Kennewick Man,” to “We need more genetic data,” to “Kennewick Man exists, but what’s the real story?” Whatever the “experts” may conclude, the overall significance and importance of Kennewick Man can’t be denied. His discovery has not only revised the picture of populations coming into America but exposed the motives of radical scientists and other academic elites as being political and not scientific.

It has now put doubt into the minds of many people about the trust that can be given to some of these so-called “experts” to make fair and unbiased observations. Other claims about people entering the New World, before or after Kennewick Man, are now open to much more serious consideration than was previously given. Perhaps that is the best and final legacy of a 9,000-year-old Caucasoid, who might indeed have the last laugh in more ways than one.