Ancient skeleton is native American
Future of bones unclear as aboriginals, academics continue legal battle
There is a sad, circular logic to the life after death of Kennewick Man.
When a beautifully preserved skeleton was discovered in a riverbank in Washington State in 1996, researchers described its features as “Caucasoid.” But radiocarbon tests showed the bones dated to 8,500 years ago, eons older than the arrival of Europeans in America.
Native American groups claimed “the Ancient One” as their ancestor, and asked to repatriate and bury him. Scientists sued to keep the skeleton for further research and won, based in part on analysis that Kennewick Man’s skull did not look native American. In recent years, scientists examining his anatomy said Kennewick Man could be Polynesian or Ainu, an indigenous group from northern Japan. The long legal battle poisoned an already strained relationship between indigenous communities and academics.
This week, a group of researchers announced they had successfully sequenced Kennewick Man’s genome, something scientists had tried and failed to do in the past.
“It’s very clear,” said Eske Willerslev, lead author of the new study, published in Nature. “The genome sequence shows that he is most closely related to contemporary native Americans.”
DNA comparison also showed that members of the Colville tribes, one of the five plaintiffs in the legal fight over Kennewick Man, are very closely related to Kennewick Man, and possibly direct descendants. The other four plaintiffs did not contribute DNA for the study.
“There is some kind of irony,” Willerslev said. “The reason why we can come to this conclusion, scientifically speaking, is because the remains were kept out for science. At the same time, you can say the conclusions really show that he was native American, and maybe it should have all been different in the first place.”
It was not immediately clear what would now become of the skeleton. It is currently stored at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle.
“We have always maintained the belief that the Ancient One was one of us,” Jim Boyd, chairman of the council that governs the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, told The Associated Press.
The researchers noted that the number of native American genomes available for comparison is very small, and more analysis needs to be done on as both ancient and modern genomes become available.
That fact raises another irony: the paucity of native American genomes for study is a direct result of a deepseated mistrust of researchers in general and genetic analysis in particular, and Kennewick Man contributed to that bad blood, says Susan Pfeiffer, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto.
Yet the Colville tribes’ decision to supply DNA for testing helped resolve their relationship to Kennewick Man.
“What I hope is that the politics of ownership are gradually being balanced by communities getting interested in the science of their past,” said Pfeiffer, who has collaborated with First Nations groups on research projects. “Kennewick has helped everybody understand that there’s helpful science that can be done.”
Researchers not involved in the study said they were thrilled by the results. David Reich, a geneticist at the Harvard Medical School who has published extensively on ancient DNA, called the paper “exciting and impressive.”
Others who agreed the paper was exciting also said they were not entirely surprised by the results.
“Personally, I always thought the claims that it had European ancestry were a bit silly,” said Hendrik Poinar, an ancient-DNA specialist at McMaster University. He and Pfeiffer agreed with one of the paper’s primary conclusions: given the huge variation in human anatomy, analyses of origin based on a single skull or skeleton are bound to be flawed.
“I am super happy they are putting that to rest,” Poinar said.
Willerslev, who has also published high-profile ancient-DNA studies on the Inuit, the Clovis culture and Australian aboriginals, remarked that the saga of Kennewick Man was yet another instance where science confirmed what indigenous groups had been saying all along.
“We should be putting more attention and more interest into listening to these oral traditions,” said Willerslev.
“Their ability to remember their culture is different. They have a history that is transferred from generations to generations. I certainly pay attention now more than I did previously.”