PC TRUMPS SCIENCE

The scientist behind Kennewick Man writes his side of the story: "Kennewick Man, the ancient skeleton found in the Columbia River with a spear point in his hip, had an adventuresome life more than 9,000 years ago. He's at the center of more tumult in death, as American Indians backed by the federal government battle scientists for possession of his remains.... To the eye as well-trained as Owsley's, Kennewick Man's bones could indicate what he ate, how he lived and what life was like 450 generations ago. That spear wound, for example, apparently healed: He lived with a stone point in his hip for a while.... Owsley, like the first expert to examine the bones, paleontologist consultant James Chatters, could see that Kennewick Man's skull is unlike the skulls of American Indians. It most closely matches a people from northern Japan called the Ainu... He highlights the irony of the U.S government standing in the way of scientific progress." For more on the Kennewick man controversy see here, where it says: "Indeed, the remains seemed more 'Caucasian' than Indian" and here

And WHY is everyone so keen to get him reburied? Because his bones suggest that "Native Americans" were themselves once conquerors:

What is "native American?" "When two teenage hikers came upon the remains of a man's skeleton on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996, little did they know they'd set off a controversy over the meaning of 'native American.' Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the bones -- named 'Kennewick Man' after the nearby town in Washington State -- were between 8,340 and 9,200 years old. Initial research found the man to have Caucasoid features, different from today's native Americans although similar to the Ainu people, an indigenous group in northern Japan. Further testing suggests he may have been a Pacific Islander."