Scientists with “revolutionary”
or “revisionist” theories sometimes get carried away with their own arrogance.
Take for example Richard Jantz, a professor at the University of Tennessee in
Knoxville. Jantz has this “thing” about head size and its relation to “intelligence,”
and it should come as no surprise that at a socially conservative institution
(I know—I was there), that he would target the liberal philosophy of the most
influential modern anthropologist, Franz Boas. Boas championed “cultural
relativism,” believing that the “evolutionary” view of human development was
nothing more than a rationalization for racism, and that the concept of race
was itself a cultural construct. His view was that anthropological beliefs must
not be assumed, but that anthropologists must take a “holistic” view of peoples
and cultures and their relationship with their environment over time, rather
than merely making judgments based on empirical observation and static numbers
that fail to explain a creature as complex as man.
Jantz and his co-conspirator,
Corey Sparks, published a study intended to debunk Boas’ research on cranial
plasticity. Boas examined over 17,000 subjects in the U.S. to determine if a
change in environment affected the cranial size of children of immigrants from
Europe, specifically those born ten years before immigrating to the U.S., and
those born ten years after their parents immigrated. Boas’ research suggested
that environment did create such a change. Jantz and Sparks denied that this
was the case, arguing that any differences were too minor to be used as
evidence to support Boas’ findings.
But other scientists repudiated
Jantz’s conclusions, arguing that he deliberately misread his own data, which implied
support for Boas’ findings. These scientists implied that Jantz was guilty of intellectual misconduct by misrepresenting the nature of Boas’ research; in
keeping with his holistic view of anthropology, Boas’ intent was to determine
the effects of a changed physical environment and the quality of nutrition had
on prenatal development; Jantz and Sparks ignored this, merely making
superficial determinations based on length of residency in the U.S. Jantz
totally discounted how undernourished mothers and other physical and
environmental factors affect the development of
unborn children—and in turn their development into adulthood.
Jantz, perhaps not surprisingly,
joined Smithsonian Institute anthropologist Doug Owsley in publishing a book
that argued that the fabled “Kennewick Man” was not Amerindian, but something
else. Originally, Jim Chatter’s erroneous claim that the skull found in the
Columbia River valley in 1996 had "Caucasian” features had the giddy media
all aflutter, and crackpots who believed that Ancient European Ones were
responsible for the construction of Mayan and Aztec structures came out of the
woodwork—with theories no more credible than those who also insist that space
aliens actually built them. Long-bearded Norse cultural types were particularly
fanatical in insisting that Kennewick Man was one of their own. Local
Amerindian tribes also claimed him as one of their “ancient ones,” but in order
to justify ignoring the law on the treatment of Native American remains, it had
to be suggested that the bones were not of Amerindian origin.
Because the Smithsonian Institute
is the “official” arbiter of all things Americana, the federal courts gave in
to Owsley’s demand that his hand-picked team of researchers with their own
political agenda conduct an examination of the bones. Owsley’s team, which had
initially sided with the European origin theory, essentially conducted their
study in isolation, and revealing no data for or against potential findings for
peer review. Eventually Owsley announced to the world the bizarre claim that
while Kennewick Man was apparently not European in origin, he “most closely”
resembled the Ainu peoples of Japan. This “finding,” unsubstantiated by DNA
testing and based on the subjective view of a single specimen, was quickly
eaten-up by the media, with the primary story line being that Kennewick Man was
not Amerindian—although that itself was a subjective assessment.
Since Owsley’s findings were
clearly subjective and no data to justify his conclusion was made available at
the time, there was some scholarly doubts (particularly by
Europeans-were-here-first types), and in late 2012 he was forced by the Army
Corps of Engineers to release his supporting data, since local Amerindians
tribes were hounding it to release the bones (currently in the custody of the
University of Washington’s Burke Museum) for reburial. In the subsequent book
in which Jantz co-edited, a slew of European “ancient one” theorists, cranks
and ecentrics were permitted to submit their two-bit about how Kennewick Man
with his narrower skull must surely be that of an “ancient seafarer” who
happened to get lost at sea and somehow wound up in Pacific Northwest. Of
course, there is no evidence that the Ainu peoples 10,000 years ago—or any
peoples, for that matter—had the seafaring technology to cross an ocean. I’m
sure these claimants would cry “foul,” but that is essentially what their
claims amount to, and they are simply not credible.
In the meantime, “diffusionist”
theories have gained coinage. These theories claim that certain ancient artifacts,
art and constructions found in the Americas suggest European origin—a “vanished
race” idea that dates back to the mid-19th century—or at least a
view that Amerindians were too “barbaric” or stupid to be their creators. Claims
that Solutrean spear points found in France resemble that of the Clovis points
found in the Americas suggest an ancient race of white people residing here
before the Amerindians forgets two uncomfortable facts: The Solutrean spear-point
period ended 6,000 years before the first dated Clovis points, and it is absurd
to suggest that it is impossible for such simple tools to be created
independently by two different cultures.
Such concepts have muddled public
(not to mention scientific) perceptions; pop science journals like Scientific American, and “serious” TV programming
found on the History Channel and National Geographic portray America’s first
inhabitants as having clearly Caucasian features, not even an Asian in sight. The
racial—and racist—underpinnings of these portrayals would deny Amerindians of
not just their history, but even their right to be recognized as the original
inhabitants of the Americas. America was “white” all the time. That various
“discoveries” of mainly “Norse” origin (particularly those found in the central
regions of the U.S.) that have turned out to be frauds and forgeries have not
extinguished the “quest” to find the “real” original inhabitants of the
Americas.
That is until now, or one may
conclude so. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark were
allowed to extract a DNA sample from Kennewick Man using the latest technology;
previously it had been suggested the bones were too damaged to supply any
usable DNA. It is presumed that this study was permitted so that an entirely
“independent” team of scientists without a personal agenda could uncover the
truth of the origins of Kennewick Man.
When Owsley made his very unscientific
announcement in 2012, the UK’s Daily Mail
published this headline:
9,300-year-old Kennewick Man skeleton found in Washington 'was NOT a
Native American but more likely Polynesian'
Now, 30 months later, the Daily Mail published this headline based
on the Copenhagen researchers’ very scientific findings:
Kennewick Man WAS a Native American: DNA from 8,500 year old skeleton
reignites debate over who controls remains
Geneticist Eske Willerslev found
that while some people have claimed that Kennewick Man “has Caucus traits, so
he could be related to Europeans,” the truth was that he was genetically closer
to Amerindians than any other population group—including “Polynesians” or the
Ainu. While the researchers could not isolate any current Amerindian tribe as
the direct “ancestor” of Kennewick Man, there was no denying that his closest
present “relatives” genetically are Amerindians, perhaps diverging from a
“common ancestor” shortly before his life ended on the banks of the Columbia
River.
The independent researchers also
sought to answer the question as to why Owsley’s team could have been so
mistaken in their own findings. It was concluded that it was absurd to take a
single individual of such ancient origin and associate it to a current
population group without proper research. Doing proper research was
the error that Jantz made in rebutting Boas’ cranial study. Of course, Owsley
defends himself from looking like a fool by claiming that the new findings only
lead to more “questions”—although only ones he would prefer not to answer.
But the most obvious answer to
the question is that deep within the mind of white supremacists (or the
like-minded who claim not to be racists), there is still this self-conscious
desire to rid oneself of all notion of guilt. This land once belonged to
Amerindians. Europeans had their own land, and they came over here and
literally stole what belonged to someone else, in the sense that they didn’t
pay the original owners anything for it, just “took” it. Now they desperately
seek to “prove” it belonged to whites all along, and don’t need to be
“burdened” with the idea that they have and are now ravishing a land that was
never theirs to begin with—and are today attempting to deny it to other
descendants of this hemisphere’s original inhabitants who have greater claim to
it than Euro-Americans.
