From Genesis to Genetics: The Case of Evolution and Creationism

1. When Worlds Collide

O N E When Worlds Collide In July 1996 a nearly complete human skeleton was found by two college students on the bank of the Columbia River near the town of Kennewick, Washington. Human remains so encountered are always of concern-"Who was it?"and "Who did it?"-so the studentscalled the police. In an effort to answer those two questions the police turned the bones over to the local coroner. Burial grounds of Native Americans are sometimes encountered in that part of the Northwest, and the Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act, passed in 1990, required that any such remains be returned for burial to the tribe to which they belonged. The bones appeared to be of great age, and so it was assumed that the skeleton must be one of a Native American, since settlers of European origin reached the West Coast only a few centuries ago. But closer study suggested otherwise. To solve the puzzle, the bones were examined by an anthropologist, James Chatters, a specialist in skeletal remains of human beings. Such professionals can determine sex, size, age, cause of death, and racial type with considerable accuracy. Examination showed the skeleton to be that of a 50-year-old male of medium build, his teeth well worn and a stone arrowhead imbedded in his hip bone. Radiometric methods determined that the man died about nine thousand years ago- 2 / When Worlds Collide long before human beings of European origin first arrived in the New World, according to conventional historical accounts. Yet the skeleton had Caucasoid features. Chatters took the bones to another anthropologist for an opinion, without giving a hint of his analysis, and was told that the skeleton was of a Caucasian male. Even when Chatters revealed the age of the bones, the second anthropologist stuck to her original identification.A third anthropologist familiar with the skeletal features of modern tribes of Native Americans concluded that the skeleton could not be assigned to any one of them. Finding the nearly nine-thousand-year-old skeleton of a Caucasoid male in any part of the New World is puzzling in the extreme. Traditionally , anthropologists have thought that the first human beings to inhabit the Western Hemisphere crossed from Siberia to Alaska about 15,000 years ago. Some now believe that the event occurred much earlier, but in any case these immigrants from Siberia were of the Mongolian racial type, as are Native Americans-not Caucasoids.Anthropologists know that a few nameless fishermen from Western Europe came to the eastern shores of the New World before Columbus's arrival in 1492, as did the Vikings, but Caucasians did not come in large numbers until early in the sixteenth century. So who was the Caucasoid Kennewick Man who arrived thousands of years before the Vikings, Colurnbus, Cortez, and Pizarro? Needless to say, this is a most exciting and important question, not only for anthropologists and historians but for many nonprofessionals as well. There have even been some speculations that Caucasoid people may have been the original inhabitants of the New World. Thus, for scientists and others interested in such historical questions, further studies on Kennewick Man are overwhelmingly important. For a while it looked as though these investigations would never take place. In an effort to comply with the federal Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act, the Army Corps of Engineers assumed control of the bones, placed them in a vault, and refused to allow any further examination of them by scientists. The Umatilla When WorldsCollrde / 3 tribe, who live near the site of discovery, asked to have the bones returned to them, in which case the skeleton would be secretly buried and never be available for study. A group of anthropologists went to court to stop the Corps from complying with the tribe's request. The anthropologists claimed that the Umatillas were not in that part of the Northwest when Kennewick Man lived; hence, he could not be one of their ancestors. And of course his Caucasoid skeletal features led to the same conclusion. Thus, the available scientificevidence is that Kennewick Man was not a Umatillan or any other Native American. In response to that hypothesis, a leader of the tribe, Armand Minthorn , stated this position: Our elders have taught us that once a body goes into the ground, it is meant to stay there until the end of time.. ..If this individual...