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.
Dredging up old memories…
I think that it was the level of preservation combined with the physical features and age of the remains. At first they thought that it was a modern victim, then they did the dating and were surprised because of the individual’s height and facial features, so they wanted to study the remains because it was a bit of an outlier. They initially tried to argue that the remains predated any existing tribal claims, then they just argued that they wanted to DO SCIENCE…
Michael, i am an Irish woman now living in Scotland and i have enormous sympathy and empathy for the indigenous people of America.Until recently i was ignorant and did not really understand what the American Indians went through. Recently i finished reading ‘Bury my heart at wounded knee’ on the recommendation of a friend and now i feel i am a little a bit more knowledgeable. Consequently, I have great sadness that this man - for that’s EXACTLY what he was - is not to be returned to HIS people for re interment. That would have been the kind and decent thing to do. But alas, as this will not happen, I will pray that his soul rests in peace. Love and light, to you and your entire family. From Sandy O’Neill
And now we know. Science wins again.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka” but “That’s funny…”
—attributed to Isaac Asimov
I am certainly tone-deaf about fussing over human remains. (Including my own! Do whatever is cheapest or most sanitary or most ecological. Just don’t get all woo-woo about it.) But I think repatriating these remains to be ritually buried or whatever is a loss to future human knowledge, for no good reason.
The genetic linkage between the Kennewick Man and the local tribe is there, which is cool to see, but the cultural and familial claim is about meaningless after 8500 years. And if any cultural or familial link is discernible, I’d want that studied and learned from too. So that rationale is unconvincing for me. If anything associated with me were to survive that long, I’d love (from Beyond the Grave!!) to see it have scientific value. Basically, I don’t get emotional attachment to what’s left behind when we die.
This article, published in 2014, is full of optimism that now seems misplaced.
Perfect!
He’s ready to go on the road with ZZ Top.
Looks like the Dude. Or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing
So I was catching up on Podcasts the other day, and happen across this five part series on Free Speech, part of the Analysis series, series (itself a programme originally designed to advocate neoliberalism, but that’s quite another story). In Part 3, on religiously motivated censorship, the presenter, Timothy Garton Ash, advocates respecting the believer, not the beliefs.
And I suppose that’s the general scheme of how it’s supposed to work in the liberal West. But the problem is that the native cultural traditions of the Pacific Northwest might not see Kennewick Man as a person fully capable of removing himself from the larger societal considerations of what is sacred, someone who would be used to attack traditional native beliefs in the area, someone who would might be used to reinforce the cultural hegemony of the other.
I suspect you are being sarcastic, but science really does trump superstition. I would be completely for digging up the remains of any of my ancestors for science and my own remains for that matter. The traditional retort “but you wouldn’t like it if your ancestors’ remains were in a museum” doesn’t really work.
It turns out that the remains of pre-Florida Man (Vero Man) may predate Kennewick Man by thousands of years - possibly being the oldest in North America.
Yeah, but those sorts of values may be recent values, not shared by people living thousands of years ago.
Moreover, they may not be shared by the Indians in the area, and they also matter.
Apparently he is here to kick ass and chew gum, and he’s all out of gum.
Is Vero Man older than Encino Man?
I guess this might be an example of “white privilege” (I’m white), in that I couldn’t give a toss about the fate of my bones, but then my cultural identity isn’t under attack from multiple directions.
So why does the reconstruction have a full beard?
I’m not sure about this guy in particular; but it’s my understanding that “How/when/where did the human colonization of the Americas actually happen?” is a fairly hot topic in archaeology and anthropology. We know that it happened relatively late; but also have evidence, from dating of artifacts at sites far south in the lower reaches of South America and far east on the Atlantic coast that it apparently happened pretty fast; so I’d imagine that a body of someone who might have come across the land bridge or might have been a local northwestern American would be of interest.
