Who is the Kennewick Man

The skull depicted below may change what is to believed the history of the United States. Found along the Columbia River in 1996 in Kennewick, Washington, first the skull and then most of the skeleton remains date from 8500 B.P. to 4500 B.P. but is not Mongoloid, the typical Native American ancestor. The finding caused a furor among the Native American community, so much so it took the Ninth Circuit United States Court of Appeals to keep in the possession of  the US Department of the Interior; instead of being skirted away and immediately buried as the Native Councils wanted to do. Why did the ancient bones of one person cause such a problem? Because if analyzed to be of non-Native descent then the term Native American would no longer apply. In fact those of Western Europe would be the Native American's.

I conversed with the Laura Phillips the Archaeology Collections Manger at the Burke Museum of Natural History, where the remains resides about what testing has been done since the court's decisions and she said we recently asked the same question. She referred to their blog for the answer: http://burkemuseum.blogspot.com/2011/07/ask-burke-kennewick-man-updates.html

  To read one of the original investigators, James Chatters, findings click here: http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/html/kennewick_man.html