The Western Hemisphere. General term for the Americas following their discovery by Europeans, thus setting them in contradistinction to the Old World of Africa, Europe, and Asia.
As work progressed, a portrait of Kennewick Man emerged. He does not belong to any living human population. Who, then, are his closest living relatives? Judging from the shape of his skull and bones, his closest living relatives appear to be the Moriori people of the Chatham Islands, a remote archipelago 420 miles southeast of New Zealand, as well as the mysterious Ainu people of Japan.
“Just think of Polynesians,” said Owsley.
Not that Kennewick Man himself was Polynesian. This is not Kon-Tiki in reverse; humans had not reached the Pacific Islands in his time period. Rather, he was descended from the same group of people who would later spread out over the Pacific and give rise to modern-day Polynesians. These people were maritime hunter-gatherers of the north Pacific coast; among them were the ancient Jōmon, the original inhabitants of the Japanese Islands. The present-day Ainu people of Japan are thought to be descendants of the Jōmon. Nineteenth-century photographs of the Ainu show individuals with light skin, heavy beards and sometimes light-colored eyes.
Jōmon culture first arose in Japan at least 12,000 years ago and perhaps as early as 16,000 years ago, when the landmasses were still connected to the mainland. These seafarers built boats out of sewn planks of wood. Outstanding mariners and deep-water fishermen, they were among the first people to make fired pottery.
The discovery of Kennewick Man adds a major piece of evidence to an alternative view of the peopling of North America. It, along with other evidence, suggests that the Jōmon or related peoples were the original settlers of the New World. If correct, the conclusion upends the traditional view that the first Americans came through central Asia and walked across the Bering Land Bridge and down through an ice-free corridor into North America.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
"Kennewick Man, Owsley believes, belongs to an ancient population of seafarers who were America’s original settlers."
“I believe these Asian coastal migrations were the first,” said Owsley. “Then you’ve got a later wave of the people who give rise to Indians as we know them today.”
"These later waves may have interbred with the first settlers, diluting their genetic legacy. A trace of their DNA still can be detected in some Native American groups, though the signal is too weak to label the Native Americans “descendants.”
"The corps, which still controls the skeleton, denied Owsley’s request to conduct numerous tests, including a histological examination of thin, stained sections of bone to help fix Kennewick Man’s age. Chemical analyses on a lone tooth would enable the scientists to narrow the search for his homeland by identifying what he ate and drank as a child. A tooth would also be a good source of DNA."
That kind of makes you wonder what exactly the DNA evidence is on which these bold assertions are made.
My working hypothesis is that the remains are of the B mt DNA family moving along he Kelp Highway, but we'll see.
The assertions in the article about D mt DNA migrations are entirely unsupported. Period.
It is unfortunate that the site was covered over.
Otherwise we likely would have had a whole lot of questions answered.
The same thing goes for the embedded bone point.
In this case, my view is that the Corps had no right to prevent its examination.
My view, to sum up, is complete the autopsy, and then re-bury.
Someday Owsley et al. may be able to figure out who buried the remains:
"He appears to have died among people who treated his remains with care and respect. While the researchers say they don’t know how he died—yet—Owsley did determine that he was deliberately buried in an extended, prone position, faceup, the head slightly higher than the feet, with the chin pressed on the chest, in a grave that was about two and a half feet deep."
While I do not believe the “First Peoples” were, in fact the first, the problem with the Kennewick Man is he is a one of a kind.
Like Oetzi.
Even if he was respectful buried doesn’t automatically mean those that buried him were physically or culturally related.
He was obviously a well traveled guy.
He may have earned the respect of, and been buried according to the customs, of a group not related.
The hurried, politically motivated, ruining of the site will prevent us from knowing one way or the other.
The article I read stated that they did do an isotopic bone analysis & had determined that he was a seal hunter, far away from his land of origin, which was supposed to be somewhere to the northwest of his final resting place...
"Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, and, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer." ~ Alexander Pope
"It has been a compelling narrative. But recent excavations at Gault are part of a growing list of digs contributing new evidence that not only asserts that there were other peoples in the Americas at the same time as those who made Clovis points, but that humans had reached these lands earlier, and possibly by different routes. At the conference, when it was Collins’ turn to speak, he said just that. “By the beginning of the Younger Dryas [a 1,300-year cold snap that began about 12,800 years ago], this was already a fairly crowded archaeological landscape." http://archaeology.org/issues/145-1409/ ... -paradigms
I downloaded and read the entire magazine story.
It is, in effect, a detailed book review.
I await the book.
All in all, this entire episode is but a chapter in the sad story of how casino money has influenced politics and set back N A anthropology and archaeology by at least 100 years.
