A response to a Stereotype of the Month Entry about Kennewick Man:

>> I thought Kennewick Man was diagnosed as Caucasian because of bone structure. <<

I think it's more accurate to say someone reconstructed the face using the bone structure. Then someone looked at the face, saw it resembled Capt. Picard, and declared the face (including bone structure) to be Caucasian. To me, the reconstruction looks like it could be Amerindian easily.

Looking at the picture, I think Stewart could pass for Asian even easier than he could pass for Amerindian. I'd say the resemblance between the reconstruction and Stewart doesn't tell us a thing.

>> How do we know Kennewick Man WASN'T Caucasoid? <<

We don't know for sure, but there's no evidence he was. Chatters made the mistake of describing KM as Caucasoid. An artist cemented this impression with the so-called Picard reconstruction. Then Chatters admitted his mistake.

But my comment was about the "first Americans," plural, not KM. As I said, the presence of millennia of Paleo-Indians renders KM irrelevant. DNA matching suggests these Paleo-Indians came from Asia, and no evidence has invalidated this prevailing theory.

If someone else makes a similar claim about another skeleton with Caucasoid attributes, we'll give it due consideration. Until then, this claim is worthless. And those who continue to cry "political correctness" and "cover-up" are themselves impeding the scientific process. They're lying about the facts to further their white-power agenda.

>> The big debate was cultural heritage vs scientific investigation. <<

Yes, and both sides have legitimate arguments, a point most members of the establishment (including scientists) miss.

>> So people were on this side of the planet roughly 30,000 years ago. Who are KM's people? We don't know. That's what we were trying to find out. <<

And I'm not sure it's worth finding out if it means violating someone's sacred beliefs. We don't know lots of things that we'll probably never know. Do you favor digging up JFK's grave in Arlington National Cemetery so we can learn the truth about his bullet wounds? How about Lincoln's bones, wherever they are, so we can see if he had Marfan's disease? And how about your grandpappy's bones? Is it okay to dig him up and dissolve a few of his bones for whatever they'll tell us about history?

I read about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher recently. I didn't realize people claimed to know the actual location of Christ's tomb. I think this calls for some serious excavating. Just imagine the archaeological and religious importance of digging up Christ's bones—or whatever they find—and subjecting the remains to scientific analysis. If burning a bit of the Shroud of Turin to carbon-date it was useful, think how much more useful it would be to dissolve whatever we found of Christ for DNA testing.

Being the rational person you are about studying people's remains, I trust you agree?

Some tribes do acquiesce in the study of their ancestral artifacts. It's most likely to happen when we include them in the process and treat their beliefs and artifacts respectfully. Had the investigators done that in this case, they might've gotten further with their investigation.

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