I’m thinking that if someone stumbles across the burial place of a white person who died in North America 5,000 to 9,500 years ago there would not be a chance in hell of the remains being reinterred. That would be the archealogical scoop to end all scoops.
How can current Native American tribes claim kinship with a skeleton nearly 10,000 years old? Those tribes did not exist when he died.
A 5,000 year old burial. No.
How about this: Robert Peary brought six Greenland Inuit back to New York and established them in the Museum of Natural History as a living exhibit. Within a fairly short period, four of them, unused to the diet, climate, and pathogens of New York, died. One, a child of six, Minik, was more or less passed around and adopted and unadopted by clueless families until he was finally in his teens. On a visit to the American Museum of Natural History, he discovered that the museum’s display of an “Eskimo skeleton” was that of his father, Qisuk.
Again, I tend to agree that truly ancient burials and bodies should be open for scientific examination, (and the explorations of burial sites from Norse to Etruscan, to Greek to Egyptian and numerous others is a factual refutation that we do not generally ransack “white” burial sites), but events such as the treatment of Qisuk are well enough known to cause more than a little concern among native peoples.
The Eastern U.S. is littered with burial mounds that were plundered and desecrated that were not nearly 5,000 years old, many of them being the sites of burials for existing nations who were dispossessed of their lands only a generation or so before the graves were opened.
I think that the Kennewick claims by indigenous peoples are in error. On the other hand “Western science” seems to have brought on itself the fear and paranoia they display.
Tom: If the arguments offered by the Native Americans were made as you are making them, I’d agree. But they’re not, in the context of what the OP is talking about. I have tremendous shame for how this country has treated the Native Americans over the years, but pandering to anti-intellectual pseudo science (or whatever you want to call it) is not the way to make up for that.
Let’s not forget Ota Benga, the African man who was displayed in the Bronx Zoo.
As for white bodies being treated with respect, what about the European Bog Mummies? This page shows photos of a dozen of them.
Nor are cemetaries of white people always treated with respect. I filled my tank at the Shell station today that’s on the corner of a busy intersection. There was once a cemetary on that site.* When the church associated with it moved, they dug up the folks who had tombstones, but the other burials were left behind. I imagine the excavations for the tanks were very interesting, indeed.
Think about the Catacombs beneath Paris, lined with the bones of thousands of people who were disinterred after their lease was up? Or the pitifully exposed corpses in St. Michan’s Church in Ireland? (One website I saw claimed that visitors can even shake the hand of one of the bodies, dubbed “The Crusader.”) Or the reverence early Catholics had for “relics”: parts of bodies of saints that were displayed in churches? In the Victorian times, the graves of English kings and queens buried in Westminster were opened pretty much for curiosity’s sake alone.
If anything, our abhorance for displaying the dead seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon.
Oh, I don’t think that scientists (or the courts) should roll over and let anyone dictate how we should investigate history or science.
My only point is that while we should stick to our principles in insisting that we look for facts, we should at least recognize why there is more than a little bit of opposition from people who are probably ignorant of (distant) history and science, but who have a better grasp of more recent history, which they perceive (with some justification) as being untrustworthy. I do not think that we should surrender the field to people like Vine Deloria (whom I have not yet figured out whether he is misguided or simply a demagogue). I applaud the 2004 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denying that a man who died at least 5,000 years ago is directly related to any current Indian nation when there is no provenance, and I feel that Senator McCain’s “feel good” amendment to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act is, at best, misguided. However, I am reluctant to engage in name-calling aimed at people who have genuinely been insulted (and sometimes harmed) in the name of science when they react emotionally to efforts to dismiss their fears.
What is the difference between a graverobber, and an archeologist?
It’s a matter of degree.
Tris
No, actually, that’s completely inaccurate.
Mormons do believe that a small number of Hebrews (though not from the Ten Tribes) arrived on the American continent and probably mixed into much larger populations already living there.
Won’t accept VISA, don’t do PayPal… big shame for us overseas folks, because some of their stuff is quite cool - and, for a change, reasonably priced. 
Okay…embarassing mis-post there, but at least I picked a funny place to make it. 
Religion! Going Cheap! USA only!
Very cool, John Mace! I’d get Mom’s side, which is the one that’s officially “mongrel”, wonder what comes up…
Kind of wish I would get Dad’s though. Someone recently told me that all the blonde in that side of my family may come from some Viking. Wonder if I can convince a Bro to do it
That’s what I’m going to do. I’m doing Mom’s side and having my brother do Dad’s side. I even made it easyfor him by buying bro’ a kit for his Christmas present. 
I’m not sure how they do Dad’s side for girls since I figure they used the Y chromosome for that, and they use the mtDNA for Mom’s side. We all have Mom’s mtDNA, but only us guys have Dad’s Y chromosome.
The same debate is taking place among Alaska Natives. There was an article in the paper in the last couple of days, with one person being quoted as being afraid that they might lose their health insurance because they might be considered as Asian, not American. :rolleyes: The main argument, however, is that if the origins are traced to Asia, then it would nullify all the traditional creation stories and somehow adversely affect their culture. I think that’s a sweeping generalization, since those who don’t believe in evolution aren’t going to buy it anyway. Truthiness will always prevail over logic and fact.
Keep in mind, though, that they only look at strictly paternal and maternal lines. If you do your Dad’s side, you’ll only get an idea of where his father’s father’s father’s… father came from. So if the “Viking ancestry” came in thru some paternal great-great-great… grandmother, this test won’t detect it.
Let’s come at this a different way. How does participating in this study help the tribes or their members?
Well, it probably doesn’t. Participation is 100% voluntary, so I wouldn’t fault anyone who didn’t want to take part. But I think the point here is that it’s not just the Christian YECs who are anti-science and anti-evolution. Hell, this isn’t even about evolution so much as understanding simple migratory patterns of our own species in the not-too-distant past.
It doesn’t directly - except that the story of the ancestors of these people moving to America and conquering an entire continent is, I think, one of the most epic in the history of humankind. I’d be prouder of ancestors who did this rather than ones created in place.
If the protest was about mistreatment of remains, I wouldn’t have pitted anyone. The issue with Kennewick man was that the tribes just asserted that he was an ancestor, despite the fact that he seemed totally different. But here there are no remains, and the only issue seems to be that the study would reveal that the tribes’ myths don’t match reality.
**
Gangster October**: I had read about those guys, but they’re the standard issue Creationist moron.
That shit is seriously fucked up. I must have misunderstood the point. I was responding to a reference to Kennewick Man, not exhumations of contemporary remains, or mistreatment of contemporary indigenous peoples. (I assume you were responding to me. Without quotational attributistics it is diffucult to know for sure.)
Bear in mind–and this is no reflection on your mother, necessarily :eek: --that somewhere between 10% and 30% of people were fathered by someone other than who they thought did it. On the low end of risk you may not getaccurate results. On the high end you may be opening a can of dirty laundry.
Mine was more of a general observation in response to some of the views expressed, here, explaining why I figure that a number of indigenous groups might be leery of having “white” “science” come tramping around their genetic history.
I think they are mistaken, but I think their fears are not groundless.
“Creationist moron” is redundant.