2007-02-01 10:59:06 · 5 answers · asked by lynn 1 in Social Science ➔ Anthropology
The same reasons they study any skeletal or human remains, to find out scientific facts about their life when they were alive.
2007-02-01 11:07:19 · answer #1 · answered by j0kr420 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Today we study human remains to answer questions about the past and find out about the people who lived here 10,000 years before America was colonized. Anthropology has changed a lot since the early 1900s when a lot of anthropologists did a lot of bad things- but now we have a law- NAGPRA- Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act- that protects the remains of Native Americans. If you're interested, there's a good book called Skull Wars by David Hurst Thomas- it talks about the study of Native American remains in the past and today and about the controversial remains of the "Kennewick Man".
2007-02-01 13:41:39 · answer #2 · answered by valbee 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
In addition to studying their remains in order to learn more about them - just as they do with the remains of any other race or culture - anthropologists are very interested in how the Native Americans got here in the first place. Human beings evolved in Africa, then left the continent in two waves of migration.
The second migration wave was the one that established the earliest civilizations in the Fertile Crescent. Other groups from this wave became hunter-gatherers in Europe and Asia. Native Americans are believed to be people from the Asian groups who migrated to the Americas during one of the Ice Ages, when a land bridge existed between Asia and America where the Bering Sea is now.
There are competing theories. Some claim that although the Americas were populated first largely by Asian nomads, other groups arrived from China, Egypt and Europe and contributed to the gene pool (the European group is called "The Red Paint People").
Anthropologists are looking for evidence of these other cultures in excavations and skeletal characteristics of Native Americans.
There are a lot of other reasons, I'm sure. Those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.
Big Al Mintaka
2007-02-01 12:14:25 · answer #3 · answered by almintaka 4 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Because Native Americans are cool! And to learn how the utilized the land. They did teach propagation to the pilgrims. They also were a rare culture to actually live in moderation rather than kill and exploit everything.
2007-02-01 11:34:11 · answer #4 · answered by obscure 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
To see if they were cannibals
2007-02-02 09:35:01 · answer #5 · answered by peg42857 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋