The speculation on the origins of the populations of the new world has undergone several evolution’s since the first European explorers arrived in North and South America. Not only was the concept of a completely unknown land disturbing but to find it fill with an unknown people was profoundly disturbing. Now the prevailing ideas in early European cultures were guided by many ideas whose wellspring was the church and the Bible, the unknown land could be explained in that context but the people living in it well that would take more work. It should be remember it took from A.D.1492 to A.D.1512 for the Pope to declare officially that the new world "Indians" to be children of Adam and Eve (this in effect declared them to be human) and that the unknown land was the old world’s "Garden of Eden".

Over the intervening 500 or so years have given rise to many ideas as to the origins of the Native Americans, some rather mean spirited such as a New England theologian (Cotton Mather) who felt they were brought here by the Devil, in contrast to William Penn (a contemporary of Mather’s) who saw them as descendants of the Biblical "Lost Tribes of Israel" (this is an idea which is still a strong undercurrent in many thoughts today about Native American populations), which by the late 1700’s and early 1800’s had created a whole class of fiction and speculation being written about Native American origins. Other sources of original populations range from the Greeks, Trojans, Phoenicians, Romans, Egyptians, Ethiopians, French, English, Welsh, Danes, Atlantis, and Mu . This is a short list of candidates for first settlers (there was general agreement by the 19^th century that this was very unlikely) this was the source of later speculation that there was contact between the old world and the new world. This concept continues today and become a central element of the diffusionist school of thought ( but a greater emphasis on influencing cultural developments in the new world as opposed to being part of earliest populations .

It was in the 1600’s that the connection between some of the physical features of some Native Americans groups and those of some Asian groups were recognized as well many aspects of their languages and material culture. Also in the 1700s and 1800s the native populations seen as more homogeneous physically than other populations in the old world, and many aspects of their culture and the tools they used were variations on a common theme.

This observation and the investigations into its implications (many of which seem to indicate that there is a great deal of truth in this observation) have become the central element in the isolationists school of thought. These observations has been taken to an extreme in the 1800^th century where the speculation that Homo Sapiens had their origin in the new world. There have been others who have also made claims to a very great time depth for populations in the new world (but this is for another discussion). These early speculations created a 20^th century backlash. It was to create two schools of thought which have guided archaeological investigations and thought; the isolationists whose felt that after the first migrations the native people and their cultures developed with no or very little influence from the old world or any other culture. And the diffusionist who feel that after the first migrations there were movements of peoples and ideas from the old world among other places, and the few that thought that man developed in the new world or pre Homo Sapiens were in the new world might be thought of as hyper-isolationists (although many archaeologists have other terms for them).

The view that Native American populations were relative new comers to the new world and their cultures developed in relative isolation took hold in the early 20^th century with its strongest proponent was Ales Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian Institution, he felt that any speculation about early populations be grounded on solid evidence such as fossil bone and tools whose ages could be generally agreed on, and he felt that humans had not entered the new world until after the great ice sheets had retreated and disappeared.

Few archaeologist were willing to risk their careers by suggesting in public, any variation from this theme. By the 1920s the idea that human populations were no more than a few thousand years old and the voyage of 56 miles across the Bering straits was made by boat was the standard model for the peopling of the new world, but all that was to change.

In 1926 a most unlikely discovery was made by a most unlikely person, while searching for lost cattle George Mc Junkin a cowboy (and an African-America) near Folsom New Mexico discovered a bed of large bones in an arroyo buried 20 feet below the surface, along with the bones he discovered some projectile points (arrowheads or spears) of a type he had never seen before. His experience with bones commonly found in his part of the west gave him the insight to recognize that the bones he had discovered were anything but common, he collected some of the bones and projectile points, to puzzle over and to show his friends, and it was not long before J. D. Figgins, director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History heard of the discovery and was able to examine the bones and confirm that they belong to an extinct form of Bison, which had vanished around 10,000 years ago.

The projectile points were of a type never seen before and became known to archaeologists as Folsom points. To find human made artifacts mixed with extinct Bison bones, Figgen’s knew that this a special site that required investigation. He had to find out for himself and also knew that a great deal of careful work needed to be done to convince a skeptical archaeological community that this was not an accidental association of stones and bone. Figgins in the end had to invite some of his most severe critics to view the site, and after examining the site which had a projectile point laying between two Bison ribs, lead to something very rare in the archaeological world; nearly unanimous agreement that the site and the associated artifacts were real and the implication that humans and extinct animals had coexisted.

In 1936 another site also discovered in New Mexico, that pushed human occupation back even further in time and opened the door for new ideas and interpretations on the early peoples in the new world. The Clovis site which contained the fluted Folsom points, and in a layer below Folsom points a new type of point the Clovis with both points associated with extinct animals and a date around 12,000 years. Although many other sites have been found since then which contain Clovis or Folsom points, or date from this period (or earlier such as the Chilean site Monte Verde which appears to date around 12,500 B.P.). This has been the benchmark date for the earliest evidence for humans in the new world. Along with the questions of who were these earliest people, That’s where Kennewick Man and others play a critical role and may help to answer the questions of where did these people come from and how did they get here and how long ago did they arrive.

There have been two competing schools of thought with regard to the routes that the first humans used to enter the new world. The most dominate school of thought is the one that feels the first migrants used route which leads from

Siberia across the Beringia land bridge (now the Bering strait the shallow sea which separates Alaska and Siberia) to Alaska. The crossing believed to have been made on foot in small groups. The earlier view that the crossing was made by boat or some other watercraft, was generally discarded when evidence of the land bridge and we developed a greater understanding of how the ice ages effected sea levels and the continents. The coastal route using watercraft is the second school of thought and is now enjoying a new popularity and the points of origin for early human populations can be greatly expanded and is to some degree supported be the available information, from Kennewick Man and other archaeological evidence (such as the Prince of Wales Island man in Alaska found in 1996 and dates to 9,200 years).

The overland route has been argued over, with some archaeologists feel that the environmental conditions were to harsh at times to be the only route. The archaeological evidence along this route seems to indicate that the climate, food supply, and the tools and skills of the early people were up to the migration.

The coastal migration routes which have been proposed do not require the ice free corridor to be open and opens the window in time that the overland route requires. It also enlarges the number of places where populations could have originated (this is important in Kennewick Man’s case).

This brings us to Kennewick Man what can he tell us about these early populations, and why is his discovery become so important to modern archeology and the ideas which guide its investigations into the past. When Kennewick Man’s remains were discovered in July of 1996 no one could have foreseen the impact this discovery would have on the archaeological world, the interest that it generated in the general public. So where was Kennewick Man found, the area was near Kennewick Washington along the banks of Lake Wallula (this lake was formed by the construction of Mc Nary dam on the Columbia river) just off shore from Columbia Park. Its believed the a section of river terrace containing Kennewick Mans remains collapsed into the lake as a result of erosion ( in the National Parks Service (NPS) report its implied that this erosion was caused by the wave action of boat traffic on the lake). The remains were scattered over a 300 foot area 10 feet from the shore, in 18 inches of water, when two college students discovered the remains and notified the authorities. The area is controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) who brought in a consulting archaeologist for the recovery and initial study of the area and the remains. After this initial study the COE concluded that the area need to be stabilized and covered the area under several tons of rock (this is a typical treatment for sites by the COE and some Native American groups in the prefer this type of action) removing the discovery area from further study for the time being.

The initial examination of the remains showed that they did not belong to any modern Native American group, and on the surface the remains seemed to show some features that might be seen as Caucasoid, this along with a radio carbon date of 9,200 years sparked a great deal of interest and controversy in the scientific and Native American worlds. The findings seemed to be enough to satisfy the needs of the COE and the local Native American groups and under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) the remains were to be returned to the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, this action was blocked by a group highly respected scientists who felt that these remains were of such great value that more study was needed and filed a law suit. This some four years later has lead to some rather interesting results and opened the door to some new ideas about how the first people got here and where they came from.

First what do we know about Kennewick Man; He was between 45 and 50 years of age, was in great shape for a man of his age, he was about 5’ 9", and we have no idea why he died. He had broken his right upper arm (the humerus), two ribs at an age of between 15 and 20 years old ( these ribs did not heal properly, this type of injury would have been treated by having the chest taped to allow the ribs to heal properly), and had projectile point or knife imbedded in the upper portion of his hip (he was quite literally stabbed in the back) at an age of under 20 and most likely 15 years old.

The condition of the bones indicate the he was intentionally buried, and there is ocher staining on some of the bones. No other artifacts were recovered with the remains during the initial studies. Now if Kennewick Man is not related to any modern Native American group or to any modern European group who is he related to? This was addressed in the study sponsored by the NPS, and prepared by Joseph Powell and Jerome Rose, one of the goals of this study was to determine whether the remains were those of a Native American, and the team took this to mean a "modern or recent human population" (Powell and Rose 1999) this important in that there is such a small number of samples ( 304 samples dating from 8,000 to 1,900 B.P.) to compare Kennewick Man against (this is one of the arguments of the scientists who brought the law suite). So to show that Kennewick Man is not a member of any modern group was easily demonstrated, to show continuity between these early populations and modern ones can not be done at this time simply because we do not enough information to show how these populations changed over time, or to show how representative of these early populations Kennewick Man is. At this point he resembles the people of the south Pacific and Polynesia and the Ainu (archaeologically known as the Jomon culture) the earliest population in Japan. The speculation the Kennewick Man was of European origin has for the time being anyway has been disproved.

The DNA testing which is to be conducted on Kennewick Man’s remains will try to sequence both the mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. This will be very difficult given that there is so little collagen remains in the bone ( this is what stopped the mammoth cloning adventure last year), but the information that can be recovered may were well tell us a great deal about where he came from, and leads the way for future studies of this time period. The have been several genetic studies which have suggested that there was a single migration out of southeastern Siberia and Mongolia. But as with there have been others which indicate that there were several different migrations over time.

The study of Kennewick Man can indirectly influence the research on the evolution of language in the new world, the usefulness of oral traditions of the Native American people in answering questions of this type, and perhaps change the way archaeologists and the government view and treat these very early archaeological resources.

Wm. Glover (Archaeologist at Large)