Kennewick man

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Kennewick Man (Kennewick Man) is the name for a bone Fund, which on 28 July 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River in the south of the US -Bundesstaates Washington near the city of Kennewick was discovered. The bones were radiocarbon dated to 7300 BC. BC (8410 ± 60 uncal. BP ), but had morphological features that did not seem to correspond with those of the Indian remains of the epoch. Genetic studies were not published until 2015: they revealed that the Kennewick man clearly of Indian origin and closely related to the ancestors of those peoples who still live in the region around its place of discovery.

Findings and investigations

At the edge of a water sports event, a spectator found a skull in a bank area of ​​the Columbia River, which is subordinate to the US Army Corps of Engineers . The coroner called on the anthropologist James C. Chatters of Central Washington University , who with helpers between July 28 and August 29, 1996 was able to recover around 350 bones and bone parts in the mud in an area of ​​just over 20 m resulted in an almost complete skeleton. All of the long bones were in close proximity to the skull. At first glance, it could be a modern person of European origin and thus a possible crime victim, but a broken stone spearhead was quickly found stuck in a pelvic bone, as is typical of the Archaic period . Therefore, dating using the radiocarbon method was commissioned. This resulted in an age of the bones of 8370 ± 60 uncorrected carbon years before present .

The Corps of Engineers therefore classified the find as Indian . According to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, all federally owned body parts and cult objects of Indians must be given to their descendants so that they can be buried according to their culture. The Corps of Engineers stopped all ongoing tests and decided to transfer the bones to five local Indian peoples for burial. Eight archaeologists from different universities brought lawsuits against the Corps of Engineers because the bones were too old to be an ancestor of the five peoples now residing in the region, and obtained an injunction allowing the investigations to continue.

Chatters directed the extensive testing, which spanned various fields, institutes, and facilities. The site was examined for its stratigraphy and geology and the skeleton was compared with today's population groups on the basis of various features. The determination of the age of the bones was refined with archaeological methods and after corrections and calibration resulted in an age of 9330–9580 BP years.

Misunderstandings arose because the anthropologist Chatters described the morphology of the Kennewick man as "caucasoid-like", which is a technical term in forensic anthropology, but the term in the media as "caucasoid" (Caucasian) in the sense of racial classification in the US - Population statistics and thus understood as of European origin. Therefore, the Kennewick man sparked a discussion about the ancestry of the Indians and the history of the settlement of America .

Closer investigations came to the conclusion that the Kennewick man must have been about 1.73 m tall, weighed between 70 and 75 kg and was about 40 to 45 years old when he died. The appearance of its skeleton showed features of various today's population groups. There were features that were most closely related to those of the Ainu , the Japanese natives, while others pointed to Indians of the American Southwest, for example in Arizona . The attempt to reconstruct the face based on the skull bone revealed astonishing similarities with the English actor Patrick Stewart , which again led to speculation about the origin.

The skeleton showed various injuries. A fracture of the left forearm had long healed, but this must have led to permanently restricted mobility of the elbow joint. The stone spearhead with a size of 79 mm in the pelvic bone was also an older injury. The fragment was encapsulated by newly formed tissue, the bone healed. However, there is evidence that it has developed into chronic inflammation that could have impaired the man's walking until he died. At least seven ribs were broken due to a flat impact from the front; the injury may have triggered acute inflammation. The cause of death was therefore assumed to be either a complication of the chronic inflammation, an acute inflammation or the consequences of the injury to the upper body.

The skeleton was kept at the Burke Museum in Seattle until the legal battle was closed . On February 17, 2017, the bones were buried in the basin of the Columbia River.

Ethnic classification

For a long time, the Clovis culture was considered to be the first American cultural stage, and today's indigenous peoples were considered the descendants of those people who gradually immigrated via the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age . In addition to other finds in South America and Central America , it was above all the Kennewick Fund that partially initiated a paradigm shift in the settlement debate on the American continent.

Morphological features suggested that the Kennewick man was related to the Ainu , the Japanese indigenous people. Therefore, there was speculation about a separate wave of immigration via the Bering Strait or the Bering Sea . However, the first evaluation of genetic analyzes of the bone material showed in mid-2015 that the Kennewick man is clearly more closely related to the Indians of North America than to any other group of people. Its DNA has the closest match with that of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation . He is generally seen as a roaming hunter; the stone spearhead and other injuries indicate clashes.

Dispute over rights

In addition to new scientific theses, the find also triggered disputes about how to deal with the remains. The current residents of the area, the Yakama , Umatilla , Nez Percé and Colville , sued in court because they wanted to bury the man claimed to be their ancestor. The legal basis for this has been a law since 1990 ( Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act ; abbreviation NAGPRA), which regulates the return of cultural legacies of the North American Indians to their descendants. Various anthropologists, including Grover Krantz , took the view that the remains were not protected by NAGPRA, as they could not be considered the ancestors of today's Indians due to anatomical differences. The legal dispute had not yet been resolved in 2010, as the modification of a paragraph in the NAGPRA Act was again postponed.

The same is true of about 8600 BC. Found from Nevada, which is known as the Spirit Cave Man . After all, the female skeleton , known as Buhl Woman (after Buhl in Idaho ), belongs to this series, which is even more than 10,000 years old, but has features typical of the First Nations . It was buried after the scientific analysis.

In 2010 the government pledged to return all human remains - from a total of around 40,000 individuals - to the tribes. The provisions no longer relate to the evidence of a genetic relationship, but only to the tribal area in which the finds were made.

According to the genetic analyzes, the five peoples associated with the region, Yakama, Wanapum, Umatilla, Colville and Nez Percé, applied for a traditional burial in 2016. The delivery and immediate burial took place on February 17, 2017 at an unpublished location on the Columbia Plateau .

literature

  • James C. Chatters: Ancient Encounters. Kennewick Man and the First Americans. New York, 2001, ISBN 978-0684859378 .
  • James C. Chatters: The Recovery and First Analysis of an Early Holocene Human Skeleton from Kennewick . In: American Antiquity. Volume 65, No. 2, 2000, pp. 291-316, doi: 10.2307 / 2694060
  • Douglas W. Owsley, Richard L. Jantz (Eds.): Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-62349-200-7
  • Douglas W. Owsley and Richard L. Jantz: Archaeological Politics and Public Interest in Paleoamerican Studies: Lessons from Gordon Creek Woman and Kennewick Man. In: American Antiquity. Volume 66, No. 4, 2001, pp. 565-575, doi: 10.2307 / 2694173 , full text (PDF)
  • David J. Meltzer : Kennewick Man: coming to closure . In: Antiquity . tape 89 , no. 348 , December 2015, ISSN  1745-1744 , p. 1485-1493 , doi : 10.15184 / aqy.2015.160 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ BBC-News of July 6, 2005: Scientists finally study Kennewick Man (English), accessed on July 27, 2011
  2. ^ R. Taylor, D. Kirner, J. Southon and J. Chatters: Radiocarbon dates of Kennewick Man. In: Science . Volume 280, 1998, pp. 1171-1172 doi: 10.1126 / science.280.5367.1171c
    The Kennewick Man Finally Freed to Share His Secrets. On: smithsonianmag.com , September 2014.
  3. ↑ a b Morten Rasmussen, Martin Sikora et al .: The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man . In: Nature . Volume 523, No. 7561, 2015, doi: 10.1038 / nature14625 .
  4. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, this chapter is based on the first scientific publication: James C. Chatters: The Recovery and First Analysis of an Early Holocene Human Skeleton from Kennewick . In: American Antiquity. Volume 65, No. 2, 2000, pp. 291-316, doi: 10.2307 / 2694060
  5. ↑ Kennewick Man's Bones Reburied, Settling a Decades-Long Debate. ( Memento of October 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) On: discovermagazine.com of February 21, 2017.
  6. ^ Roger Downey: The Riddle of the Bones: Politics, Science, Race, and the Story of Kennewick Man. Springer-Verlag, NY, 2000, ISBN 0-387-98877-7 .
  7. ^ NAGPRA - Frequently Asked Questions. National Park Service , accessed July 28, 2021.
  8. ^ Native Remains Nationwide to be Returned from Museums to Tribes , AllGov.com, March 29, 2010
  9. ↑ Smithsonian Magazine: Over 9,000 Years Later, Kennewick Man Will Be Given a Native American Burial 28 April 2016th
  10. ↑ Seattle Times: 'A wrong had finally been righted': Tribes bury remains of ancient ancestor known as Kennewick Man , February 19, 2017

Coordinates: 46 ° 13 '32.3 "  N , 119 ° 10' 8.7"  W.

personal data
SURNAME Kennewick man
BRIEF DESCRIPTION fossil
BIRTH DATE around 73rd century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH around 73rd century BC Chr.