Kennewick Man was Native American

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The burial site will be a secret, so we can have this fight all over again in a few thousand years.

Genius at work, again.

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My working hypothesis is that if these two conditions are met –

  1. No-one remembers where the burial site is.
  2. Someone unearths well-hidden remains and understands their significance.

– it means that civilization has both collapsed and recovered the the point where the argument will take the same form as before.

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Because a real genius would disregard aboriginal culture and lay claim. After all, science trumps superstition, right? So let’s dig up grandpa!

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It’s quite possible that his most recent relatives were members of the local tribe, but DNA research has proven that Native American genetics historically came from eastern Asia and Siberia, so it’s not entirely wrong…just off by thousands of years.

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I thought we knew this months ago. I certainly saw a story months ago.

Since the samples of DNA were taken from people on the Colville Reservation, I assume he’s my ancestor. My distant cousins are on and around the Colville reservation.

Note that while there are Colville people, this reservation has a number of groups. Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce landed there after he gave his famous “I will fight no more forever speech”. But the Syilx (aka Okanagan) are there too, at least those who were in the area when the US-Canada border went up. Those are the cousins.

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The burial site will be secret; it does not necessarily follow that it will be forgotten by those charged with its care.

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“Kennewick Man was Native American”

Hmm, maybe “was Indigenous,” or “was Aboriginal”? Given that the Americas didn’t exist yet…

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I find it interesting that the reconstruction sculpture pictured here shows the man with what to my eyes looks like a very WASP-y beard. Kind of seems like the reconstructive sculpture was done with an assumption already in place that he wasn’t closely related to modern Native Americans.

My impression has been that aboriginal men around where I live (mostly Cree and Chipewyan) don’t tend to get much facial hair. Maybe that varies across the Americas, and there are Native American lineages that could credibly go with the Kennewick Man having had that kind of thick bushy beard.

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Whatever his ancestry, he looks like a bad-ass in need of some cool shades.

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Reminds me of the Helliconia series or “A Canticle for Lebowitz”

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One thing I can tell you: Kennewick Man is wayyy cooler than Florida Man.

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I’m sure he didn’t self-identify as “Native American,” but I’m also pretty sure he didn’t self-identify as “Indigenous” or “Aboriginal.” We don’t even know what language he spoke let alone what label he’d prefer today.

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He’d self-identify that that was his land and newcomers should recognise it…then either have a meal or a fight.

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I don’t know that’s a given either. “Ownership” of land isn’t a universal concept.

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Why are the researchers so buzzed about these remains anyway? Are they full of science?

It doesn’t exactly sound like we’re talking about a “Lucy” or even “Ötzi”-level discovery here.

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No. But that doesn’t mean you can’t glean information that helps complete a picture of the past.

Queue the “why not both” girl, as I think we can study the bones and then lay them to rest when done.

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Seems like they’ve probably had adequate time to do the former by this point, no? It’s been over 20 year now.

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I dunno, not a scientist. I know stuff is laying in the backs of museums collecting dust because of lack of budgets to properly study them. The hot things with fossils right now is digging through old collections, vs going out in the field, and rediscovering over looked finds.

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Staked-out land ownership may be overstated, but territoriality certainly is universal, particularly if you have been living in a certain an area for long enough…hmmm, how to denote time passage…say as long as it takes to grow a family, or better, having been born there and grew up in the area, even if nomadic/seasonal. The one thing that promotes sedentarism is pressure from surrounding groups to stay put and mind their own turf; in this context there will be additional layers of kinship, trading, friendship and counsel agreement on boundaries, and other cultural artifact/traditions that come to define where they live and lead to the rational idea that ‘this is ours’, if not full on ownership. Just because this is prehistoric don’t underestimate [their] sophistication.

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