XPost: seattle.eats, soc.culture.usa, tacoma.general   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrat   
   From: hossman@dc.com   
      
   Nearly two decades after the ancient skeleton called Kennewick   
   Man was discovered on the banks of the Columbia River, the   
   mystery of his origins appears to be nearing resolution.   
      
   Genetic analysis is still under way in Denmark, but documents   
   obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act say   
   preliminary results point to a Native-American heritage.   
      
   The researchers performing the DNA analysis “feel that Kennewick   
   has normal, standard Native-American genetics,” according to a   
   2013 email to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is   
   responsible for the care and management of the bones. “At   
   present there is no indication he has a different origin than   
   North American Native American.”   
      
   If that conclusion holds up, it would be a dramatic end to a   
   debate that polarized the field of anthropology and set off a   
   legal battle between scientists who sought to study the 9,500-   
   year-old skeleton and Northwest tribes that sought to rebury it   
   as an honored ancestor.   
      
   In response to The Seattle Times’ records request, geochemist   
   Thomas Stafford Jr., who is involved in the DNA analysis,   
   cautioned that the early conclusions could “change to some   
   degree” with more detailed analysis. The results of those   
   studies are expected to be published soon in a peer-reviewed   
   scientific journal. Stafford and Danish geneticist Eske   
   Willerslev, who is leading the project at the University of   
   Copenhagen, declined to discuss the work until then.   
      
   But other experts said deeper genetic sequencing is unlikely to   
   overturn the basic determination that Kennewick Man’s closest   
   relatives are Native Americans.   
      
   The result comes as no surprise to scientists who study the   
   genetics of ancient people, said Brian Kemp, a molecular   
   anthropologist at Washington State University. DNA has been   
   recovered from only a handful of so-called Paleoamericans —   
   those whose remains are older than 9,000 years — but almost all   
   of them have shown strong genetic ties with modern Native   
   Americans, he pointed out.   
      
   “This should settle the debate about Kennewick,” Kemp said.   
      
   Establishing a Native-American pedigree for Kennewick Man would   
   also add to growing evidence that ancestors of the New World’s   
   indigenous people originated in Siberia and migrated across a   
   land mass that spanned the Bering Strait during the last ice   
   age. And it would undermine alternative theories that some early   
   migrants arrived from Southeast Asia or even Europe.   
      
   It’s not clear, though, whether the upcoming study will provide   
   tribes the legal ammunition they need to reclaim what they call   
   “The Ancient One.”   
      
   Controversy flared over the skeleton almost from the moment in   
   1996 when two students stumbled across human bones near the   
   Southeastern Washington town of Kennewick.   
      
   Bothell archaeologist James Chatters, the first scientist to   
   examine the skeleton, said the skull looked “Caucasoid,” not   
   Native American. A facial reconstruction that bore a striking   
   resemblance to Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (actor Patrick Stewart) of   
   the television series “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” further   
   inflamed members of local tribes, who argued that the remains   
   were rightfully theirs under the Native American Graves   
   Protection and Repatriation Act.   
      
   After eight years of litigation, a federal appeals court ruled   
   in 2004 that Kennewick Man’s extreme age made it impossible to   
   establish a clear link to any existing Northwest tribes.   
      
   A scientific team led by Douglas Owsley, a physical   
   anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, won the right to   
   study the skeleton, which is stored at the University of   
   Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.   
      
   The results, including a new facial reconstruction based on more   
   thorough analysis of the skull, were published last year in a   
   669-page book. Owsley, the lead author, told Northwest tribal   
   members in 2012 that he remains convinced Kennewick Man was not   
   Native American.   
      
   In an interview last week, Owsley explained that he bases that   
   conclusion on the shape of the skull, which doesn’t look   
   anything like the skulls of modern Native Americans. Its narrow   
   brain case and prominent forehead more closely resemble Japan’s   
   earliest inhabitants and people whose genetic roots are in   
   Southeast Asia, not Siberia and other parts of Northeast Asia.   
      
   “His origins are going to go back to coastal Asia,” Owsley said.   
      
   That wouldn’t preclude the possibility of some distant, shared   
   ancestry with Native Americans, he added. But chemical analysis   
   of the bones suggests Kennewick Man ate a lot of marine mammals,   
   which means he probably spent most of his life along the coast   
   of Alaska or British Columbia, not on the Columbia Plateau where   
   his bones were discovered, Owsley said.   
      
   With its ability to settle questions about lineage, DNA analysis   
   has become one of the most powerful tools for the study of the   
   ancient world, said Peter Lape, curator of archaeology at the   
   Burke Museum. “This is yet another case where genetics are   
   really revolutionizing the way we think about ancestry and   
   calling into question older scientific methods that rely on   
   looking at the shape of bones,” he said.   
      
   Nevertheless, the majority of visitors he encounters at the   
   museum still have the impression that Kennewick Man is   
   Caucasian. “That initial media storm from 1996 just kind of   
   stuck,” Lape said.   
      
   Chatters, the man who kicked up that storm, changed his mind   
   after studying the 13,000-year-old skeleton of a young girl   
   discovered in an underwater cave in Mexico. As with Kennewick   
   Man and other remains of the earliest prehistoric Americans, the   
   shape of the girl’s skull was unusual. But DNA analysis proved   
   that she shared a common ancestry with modern Native Americans,   
   originating with the people who migrated into the land mass   
   called Beringia beginning about 15,000 years ago.   
      
   “The result from Kennewick is the same one we’re getting from   
   the other early individuals,” Chatters said. “It’s what I   
   expected.”   
      
   Attempts to extract DNA from Kennewick Man’s bones in the late   
   1990s failed. But the technology has advanced so much since then   
   that researchers recently succeeded in analyzing the genome of a   
   130,000-year-old Neanderthal from a single toe bone.   
      
   Willerslev’s Danish lab is a world leader in ancient DNA   
   analysis. Last year, he and his colleagues reported the genome   
   of the so-called Anzick boy, an infant buried 12,600 years ago   
   in Montana. He, too, was a direct ancestor of modern Native   
   Americans and a descendant of people from Beringia.   
      
   Until details of the Kennewick analysis are published, there’s   
   no way to know what other relationships his genes will reveal,   
   Kemp said. It may never be possible to link him to specific   
   tribes, partly because so few Native Americans in the United   
   States have had their genomes sequenced for comparison.   
      
   “My feeling is once you get the Kennewick genome, there are   
   going to be people lining up to find out if they’re related to   
   him,” he said.   
      
      
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