HUH? The Ancient One is Japanese??? Come on!!! What else are these nutty professors going to come up with next? Elsie === [from Lona. Thanks!] Mon, 10 Jul 2000 http://www.abqjournal.com/scitech/26029scitech05-08-00.htm 'Kennewick Man' DNA in Doubt By John Fleck Journal Staff Writer Newly ordered DNA tests of a controversial 9,000-year-old Washington State skeleton might not settle the question of whether he is related to modern Native Americans, according to University of New Mexico anthropologist Joe Powell. It is not simply that the scientific evidence is insufficient, according to Powell, a member of the scientific team trying to sort out who "Kennewick Man" really is. In the 9,000 years since Kennewick Man died, human populations have evolved, migrated and mixed so that you cannot draw a line of descent from a group of ancient humans to any modern population, Powell said. That mixing of humanity makes our very ideas about racial differences scientifically meaningless, with no genetic basis, according to Powell. The question of who can claim Kennewick Man as their ancestor has become a vexing political and legal issue for the federal government. The bones were found along the banks of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Wash., in 1996. Federal law requires ancient human bones to be repatriated to Native Americans. But initial reports, based on Kennewick Man's bone structure, suggested he might have been of European origin. That complicated the idea of repatriating the remains to the Umatilla Tribe or other area Native American groups. If true, it also would have radically changed scientists' ideas of who the first Americans were, and where they might have come from, because conventional scientific wisdom said Native Americans' ancestors were Asian. After a detailed study ordered by the federal courts, Powell and a group of other scientists concluded last fall that Kennewick Man does not resemble modern Europeans. But detailed analysis of the skeleton's bone structure made it impossible to point to any one modern group as obvious descendants, Powell said. The modern group that Kennewick Man most closely resembles, Powell said, is the Ainu, a group native to the islands of Japan. So the courts ordered a second step. Last week, Powell joined a team of scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle to begin a DNA analysis of Kennewick Man, to see if a genetic link can be drawn between the ancient skeleton and any modern group of humans. DNA has become a powerful tool for anthropologists in recent years. The lengthy molecule carries the genetic detail needed to build a human, from how to make a brain to what color hair the person will have. Slight differences in DNA from one person to the next are the source of humanity's diversity. But trying to use those differences to define racial categories has proven an impossible task, Powell said. There is a tendency for people to want to point to a single ancient group as their ancestors, Powell said, but that ignores the evolutionary changes in humans over the last 15,000 years, and the migration and intermarriage that have blurred groups' boundaries. For example, human groups that migrated toward the tropics 15,000 years ago, after the end of what scientists call the Pleistocene epoch, tended to develop darker skin as a protection against ultraviolet light, he said. It's an example of how similar appearance arose separately in different groups. "At the end of the Pleistocene, races as we know them may not have existed," Powell said. Recent genetic research emphatically supports the view, Powell said. Studies of genetic variety among humans suggest that differences within any given racial group are far more common and widespread than genetic differences between races. Race, Powell said, "is really not a meaningful concept scientifically." The extensive analysis of Kennewick Man has added little new scientific understanding to the question of race and our genetic roots, Powell said. But the publicity surrounding the case has helped raise the issue in the public consciousness, according to Powell