Locked Away for Years, Skeleton's Secrets Rewrite Prehistory of North America
In the summer of 1996, while wading in the shallows of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, two students stumbled onto a skeleton. Dated to 7000 to 6900 B.C., it would turn out to be one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made in North America.
But the land where the remains were found belonged to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Despite repeated requests to examine the skeleton, the Corps locked the bones away. A coalition of Columbia River Basin Indian Tribes also claimed the bones.
Undeterred, Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution, and seven other scientists filed a lawsuit. In 2002, after facing down 93 federal attorneys, the scientists won the case. And Kennewick Man's story could at last be told.
Speaking from his skeleton-packed office in Washington, D.C., Owsley, co-author of Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton, talks about listening to the stories skeletons have to tell, why Kennewick Man is helping rewrite the record of American prehistory, and what it's like working with the CIA and FBI on modern investigations.
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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141207-kennewick-man-bones-archaeology-ancient-ngbooktalk/
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