How did you stand on the Kennewick Man issue?

Question

How do you stand on the Kennewick Man issue?
Were you in favour of scientific investigation?

Or in favour of suppression of scientific investigation in favour of religious rights?

Answer 1

surely scientific investigation is always worth pursuing even if the truth is unsavoury. notice i said TRUTH because science is about ths search for truth whereas religion is a BELIEF and everyone you meet has differrent beliefs which always leads to problems and discrimination.
i can accept a scientific fact because its proven but how do i prove religion? how do i prove if there is 1 god or many? i cant.
the danger with religious beliefs and rights is that people accept them as fact when theyre only beliefs and not facts.
some people believe blood transfusions are sinful and will die before they partake in them. is this right in any sense?
i dont think religion is about dying for your beliefs - weve had our fill of that and we are still suffering from it. look at airport security measures increases in recent times - all because people interpret their religion in certain ways. thats always the problem - how we accept our beliefs and act on them. some of us become fanatical extremists and end up damaging society to uphold certain slants on what were preached.

if a burial site is regarded as sacred by certain people but contains potentially important information i dont think it should be preserved purely on religious grounds. look at how much research is gone into exotic plant medicine - would you close off the rainforests forever and deny us the benifit of all those potential cures and other discoveries?

Answer 2

There was strong evidence (dna and other types) that proved Kennewick Man was not an ancestor to the people who claimed him. Those tribes weren't even there a few hundred years ago, and Kennewick is thousands of years old. The should expect no consideration.

As to oral history being an acceptable tool for archaeology, it's completely out of the question.

Answer 3

i'm against it being given to any tribe. Bone tests have shown the skeleton to be someplace between 5,650 and 9,510 years previous. The regulation extremely says that a tribe desires to instruct kinship with the skeleton. there is not any way any present day tribe can instruct kinship with such an previous skeleton. On February 4, 2004, usa courtroom of Appeals for the 9th Circuit panel rejected the allure further with the help of the U.S. military Corps of Engineers and the Umatilla, Colville, Yakama, Nez Perce and different tribes for the reason that they have been unable to instruct any evidence of kinship. That become the suitable suited ruling.

Answer 4

I seem to remember something about this, the skull was found in the Columbia River bank in Washington in the middle 90s` about 1995/6. There was some argument as to whom the remains belonged to, but I think the army took possesion because it was found on their land. I know that tests were done on it and the face was reconstructed. They thought it to be a male in his mid thirties of Polynesian descent, he was over five thousand years old.I think that the scientific investigation was correct, but I think the remains should then have been reburied. As far as I can remember they were put in a box in a `storage` facility somewhere in Washington, I have not heard anything about it for years.

Answer 5

I feel that some of there testing is not proof as most of it has not stood on its own. But then again I feel that if we do not look into things there will not be answers to our never ending question........here are some thoughts on the subject..........



He adds a piece to the puzzle. As an almost perfectly-preserved, complete skeleton, he will contribute greatly to our knowledge of the physical and genetic characteristics of one of the earlier immigrant groups, since my studies and those of others consistently note his closer resemblance to peoples of southeastern Asia. The spear point in his pelvis also may be offering a clue about one of the later waves. From what I have been able to see of it, it appears to be a classic Cascade point, a representative of a style later found with the earliest human skeletons that fit seamlessly among late Prehistoric northwestern American Indians. The facts that his death comes at the beginning of the Cascade Phase of Northwest prehistory and that the spear point is associated with people who differ profoundly from him in their physical characteristics hints that the transition was not always a peaceful one.

Judge Jelderks ruled that the government erred in its reliance on oral history to link the tribes and Kennewick Man. What role do you think oral history has in the study of prehistory?

Oral history is invaluable as a source of testable hypotheses about latest prehistoric times and as a means for linking fairly recent skeletal remains to specific events and social groups. I've used it that way myself. What the judge objected to was the acceptance of folklore, which is primariy allegorical, as if it were an oral history of the distant past. The usefulness of oral history is limited to the most recent times because it can change with each retelling, depending on the social positions of teller and listener, and the political realities and mores of the time. Past one or two dozen tellings, the importance of actual events is subordinated to the lesson of political content and is ultimately lost altogether.

Answer 6

Go ahead