On July 28, 1996, two college students swimming in the Columbia River near Kennwick Washington spotted the skull of what turned out to be one of the most complete and oldest prehistoric human skeletons found in the USA. Dubbed the Kennewick Man, this skeleton ended up being the center of a controversy that pitted archaeologists against Native Americans, specifically the Umatilla Indians...

The Umatilla claimed the Kennewick Man as an ancestor, and wanted to bury him according to their customs, while the scientists of course, wanted to study the remains to learn more about the people living 9000 years ago in the region of what is now Washington and Oregon states. In 2004 an 8 year court battle finally concluded with scientists awarded the right to study the skeleton. Initial study began just weeks ago, and now initial findings are being released.

From AP article Scientists Detail Study of Kennewick Man (via Yahoo News):

..."This individual's biography is written in his bones," said Dr. Hugh Berryman, a forensic anthropologist from Middle Tennessee State University. "This is a window into the past."...

..."I'm very interested in that skull," Berryman said ... "There appears to be some European-type facial features." That, he said, could suggest there were other migrations of people other than those strictly out of Asia.

Certain skull measurements, including the shorter face and less width across the cheekbones, don't match that traditionally associated with Native American characteristics, said Dr. Douglas W. Owsley, a forensic anthropologist with the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C...

...Last year a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, agreeing with an earlier decision by a federal judge in Portland, Ore., ruled there was no link between the skeleton and the tribes...

...Models of the skull and pelvis, which has a projectile — perhaps a spearhead — embedded in a hip, will be used to construct permanent cast to be used for additional research and to minimize impact to the actual skeleton...

A recent BBC News article shows a facial reconstruction of the Kennewick Man... he looks a bit like Patrick Stewart!

Stories like this leave me feeling mixed emotions. The pursuit of knowledge is perhaps the highest aspiration that I can think of, particularly knowledge of humanity. And yet, I can sympathize with the Native Americans who see this study as a defilement of one of their own. Doubtless any of us would be appalled to find our grandparents or even our great grandparents exhumed for scientific study without our consent. To me, however, millenia of separation make the idea easier to swallow... who can claim the remains as an ancestor? Who can feel any sort of familial relationship with someone who existed so long ago as to have been part of an entirely different culture?

But then, those feelings come to me through my own culture, which has different beliefs about death. There are excavations of ancient Anglo burial sites underway in parts of the world, such as the Buckland Anglo-Saxon Cemetery.

Where do you stand on stories like this? Science or Respect for Cultural Beliefs? Or somewhere in between?