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.
