Kennewick Man or Ancient One was a Native American man who lived during the early Holocene whose skeletal remains were found in 1996 washed out on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington. Radiocarbon tests show the man lived about 8,400 to 8,700 years ago, making his skeleton one of the most complete ever found this old in the Americas, and thus of high scientific interest for understanding the peopling of the Americas.
The discovery precipitated a nearly twenty-year-long dispute involving the Federal government, Native Americans, and scientists who wanted to study the remains. The Federal government, through the United States Army Corps of Engineers, held jurisdiction over the land where the remains were found and, thus, had legal custody. However, Native American tribes asserted legal rights to rebury the man under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), a federal law to repatriate Indian remains. Nevertheless, some members of the scientific community believed it was essential to conduct research on the skeleton and asserted he was only distantly related to today's Native Americans and was more closely related to Polynesian or Southeast Asian peoples, which would exempt the case from NAGPRA.
The controversial case wound its way through courts for many years, including a period when scientists won access to study the remains. At the same time, technology for analyzing ancient DNA had been steadily improving. In 2015, scientists at the University of Copenhagen published a study which found that in comparison to contemporary human populations, Kennewick Man's genome is closest to that of modern Native Americans, though he is not associated with any specific modern tribe. In 2016, Congress passed legislation to return the remains to a coalition of Columbia basin tribes. Kennewick Man was reburied according to tribal traditions on February 18, 2017, with 200 members of five Columbia basin tribes in attendance, at an undisclosed location in the area. Within the scientific community since the 1990s, arguments for a non-Indian ancient history of the Americas, including by ancient peoples from Europe, have been losing ground in the face of ancient DNA analysis. The establishment of Kennewick Man's genetic affinity with modern Native Americans symbolically marked the "end of a [supposed] non-Indian ancient North America".
Discovery
The individual who became known as Kennewick Man was discovered by accident by two college students, Will Thomas and David Deacy, on July 28, 1996. They were watching a hydroplane race on the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, in the northwestern United States. Thomas was wading in about of water, about from shore, when his foot struck something hard and round. He reached down and pulled up a human skull.
Thomas and Deacy placed the skull in bushes until the race was over. They then found a plastic bucket, retrieved the skull and took it to a Kennewick police officer. Police returned with them to the site and found more bones underwater and along the shore. The Benton County coroner determined that the remains were not from a recent death and asked archaeologist James Chatters to examine them.
Over ten visits to the site during the following month, Chatters and others recovered about 90% of the skeleton. Despite having been scattered, the remains were unusually complete and well preserved for their age. The skull and jaw were nearly complete, and even parts of the hands and feet survived. All of his permanent teeth had been present when he died, although two wisdom teeth were lost after death and were not recovered.
Scientific analysis Description and age Chatters concluded it was "a male of late middle age (40–55 years), and tall (170 to 176 cm, 5′7″ to 5′9″), and was fairly muscular with a slender build". The Owsley team in 2005 reported he may have been as young as 38 at the time of death.
A small bone fragment submitted to the University of California, Riverside, for radiocarbon dating estimated he lived between 9,300 and 9,600 years ago (8,400 uncalibrated "radiocarbon years"), and not the 19th century, as had originally been thought. Subsequent radiocarbon dating indicated a somewhat younger age of 8,900 to 9,000 years BP, and later 8,400 to 8,690 calibrated years Before Present.
Geography Measurements of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotope ratios in the bone collagen indicate that the man lived almost exclusively on a diet of marine mammals for the last 20 or so years of his life and that the water he drank was glacial melt. The closest marine coastal environment where this water could have been found during his lifetime was in Alaska. That, combined with the location of the find, led to the conclusion that the individual led a highly mobile, water-borne lifestyle centered on the northern coast.
Injuries Forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley, who later led the scientific team that examined Kennewick Man's skeleton in 2005, discovered that the bones in Kennewick Man's arms were bent. Owsley theorized that this was the result of powerful muscles built up over the course of a lifetime of hunting and spearfishing.
Owsley also found that Kennewick Man had arthritis in his right elbow, both of his knees, and several vertebrae but not severe enough to be crippling. Kennewick Man had suffered some trauma in his lifetime, which was evident by a fractured rib that had healed, a depression fracture on his forehead, and a similar indentation on the left side of the head, and a spear jab that healed.
Genetic and cultural origins Chatters, who initially investigated the skeleton, early on concluded that the "presence of Caucasoid traits [and a] lack of definitive Native-American characteristics", as well as the apparent context of the skeleton as part of an early Paleo-American group led him to state that the body was "Caucasian", an anthropological term that referred to bone structure not skin color or European origin.
Scientists attempted DNA analysis within a few years of discovery, but reported "available technology and protocols do not allow the analysis of ancient DNA from these remains" ie. multiple experts were unable to extract enough DNA for analysis.
Chatters et al. (2000) conducted a graphic comparison, including size, of Kennewick Man to eighteen modern populations. They found Kennewick Man to be most closely related to the Ainu, a recognized indigenous people of Northern Japan. However, when size was excluded as a factor, no association to any population was established. In 2001, Chatters wrote that the "craniofacial characteristics of Paleo-Americans, Asians, and early Europeans, loosely resemble the Ainu, Polynesian, and Australian peoples", but that no group was the major contributor to the Paleo-American gene pool. Anthropologist C. Loring Brace maintained in a 2006 interview that, by his analysis, Kennewick Man was "likely related" to the Ainu of Japan.
Anthropologist Joseph Powell of the University of New Mexico was also allowed to examine the remains. Powell used craniometric data obtained by anthropologist William White Howells of Harvard University and anthropologist Tsunehiko Hanihara of Saga University; this had the advantage of including data drawn from Asian and North American populations. Powell said that Kennewick Man was not European but most resembled the Ainu and Polynesians. Powell said that the Ainu descend from the Jōmon people, an East Asian population with "closest biological affinity with south-east Asians rather than western Eurasian peoples". Powell said that dental analysis showed the skull to have a 94-percent consistency with being of a Sundadont group like the Ainu and Polynesians and only a 48-percent consistency with being of a Sinodont group like that of North Asia. Powell said analysis of the skull showed it to be "unlike American Indians and Europeans". Powell concluded that the remains were "clearly not a Caucasoid unless Ainu and Polynesians are considered Caucasoid".
Later studies criticised claims made about the ancestry of the Kennewick Man purely based on skull morphology, noting that a single skull is too small a sample size to accurately determine affinities with any degree of certainty, and that the Kennewick Man's skull morphology falls within the variation of known Native American skulls.
Advances in genetic research made it possible to analyze ancient DNA (aDNA) more accurately than earlier attempts when the skeleton was found. In June 2015, a study was published which analysed his sequenced nuclear genome, which concluded that his genome was nested within the diversity of contemporary Native Americans. The study concluded Kennewick Man belonged to a population closely related to contemporary Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, including Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. Of the five tribes that originally claimed Kennewick Man as an ancestor, their members were the only ones to donate DNA samples for evaluation. The low sequencing depth (approximately 1x) of the Kennewick Man's genome, along with a lack of genomes from North American aboriginal populations have made it impossible to ascertain Kennewick Man's nearest living relatives among regional Native American tribes. His Y-DNA haplogroup is Q-M3 and his mitochondrial DNA is X2a, both uniparental genetic markers found almost exclusively in Native Americans.
Burial
When Kennewick Man was discovered, he had been buried for about 8,500 years. Erosion of the Columbia River bank had disturbed the original burial, washing bones and fragments into shallow water and mud along more than of shoreline. Most of the larger bones were found within an area about long. No bones remained in their original position in the ground, and no clear outline of the grave could be seen.
Kennewick Man had been buried deliberately. By examining the calcium carbonate left behind as underground water collected on the underside of the bones and then evaporated, scientists were able to conclude that Kennewick Man was lying on his back with his feet rolled slightly outward and his arms at his side, with the palms facing down, a position that could not have been accidental.
No grave goods or other objects were recovered in secure association with Kennewick Man's burial. There were objects around him, however. At and near the discovery site on the Columbia River, researchers found relatively recent debris, including pieces of ceramic and glass, rusted metal, nails and horseshoes. Stone flakes, fire-cracked rock, mussel shell and other older archaeological material were also found nearby. Later investigation determined that these objects were not associated with Kennewick Man.
One object was different. A broken stone projectile point was embedded in his right ilium, part of the pelvis. The surviving piece was about thick and had been made from a fine-grained gray volcanic stone, probably andesite or dacite. Bone had grown around the point, showing that the injury had healed. Chatters identified it as a Cascade point, although that identification was later disputed.
Because the original burial had already been disturbed before its discovery in 1996, it is not known whether clothing, grave goods or other objects had originally been buried with him.
Scientific initiatives and significance Scientific initiatives There have been three major scientific initiatives to study and report on Kennewick Man.