Rating: 
Summary: good for some background on k man
Review: This book is much needed. He posed questions that many people (both scientists and Native people) can't answer. The underlying question, being "What is an Indian?" AND "Who has the right to determine that?" He thoughtfully took the current "hot topic" of the Kennewick Man and showed how archaeologists haven't changed their philosophy from the past and points out that archaeology does need to change. Although, I feel some people might get caught up in the Kennewick issue TOO much this clouds many of the issues he brings up. By using the Kennewick Man to discuss these issues he demonstrates how the "Native American Image" continues to hurt the Native people of today. Cultures do change especially over 9,000 yrs. and there will be little or no "scientific" evidence to show that the Kennewick Man is an ancestor to the Native people. But oral tradition will, but Native American "Image" doesn't allow for oral tradition to be considered "truth." Overall, Thomas poses a lot of questions for the archaeological society to think about as well as mainstream society. It is well written and easy to understand for non-archaeological people.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this book.... AND read the scientific journal articles!
Review: This book is one of the better discussions of the issue, and far more factual than the arrant nonsense published by James Chatters. If anything, David Hurst Thomas errs only in trying to be fairer to certain of the current generation of scientists than they deserve. The truth is that there was never really any doubt over the direct genetic relationship between PaleoIndians like Kennewick Man & their modern Native American descendants, and that this has always been a purely political fight over control of ancient human remains... seen by the descendants as ?ancestors? to be protected, but viewed by scientists as ?research material? to fuel their careers with. (Several of the plaintiff scientists have even admitted that they had been searching for a legal ?test case? for years, hoping to gut NAGPRA. And their behavior was calculated to raise the hackles of local tribes & prevent any NAGPRA sanctioned study. They didn?t even TRY asking tribal permission under NAGPRA guidelines)
PaleoIndians & Native Americans share the same mtDNA haplogroups (which are found at low levels in Asia & the Pacific, & virtually nonexistant elsewhere). Craniometrically, some PaleoIndians (Buhl Woman, Wizard?s Beach Man, etc) show close affinities to modern Native Americans, the others don?t closely match anybody but show general affinities to Native American, Beringian, SE Asian, & Pacific populations. The largest & most comprehensive PaleoIndian craniometric study to date (Powell & Neves? ?Craniofacial Morphology of the First Americans?, from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology) determined that PaleoIndians overall DID match up with modern Native Americans, with the differences falling within the range of known evolutionary processes such as genetic drift. Linguistic & genetic studies of modern Native Americans reveal that their ancestors arrived here LONG before the PaleoIndian era (Linguistics says 30,000+ years, DNA says 20,000-40,000+ years).
Yet strangely, none of this is mentioned by scientists prominent in the Kennewick debacle. Instead, people WITHOUT biology degrees make false pronouncements about DNA, people without physical anthropology degrees (or who have them & should know better) make false & stereotypical pronouncements about craniometrics, and so on. You have the noted C.Loring Brace (a several times past director of the American Eugenics Society) claiming that ?all? Indians craniometrically match Asians such as Chinese (when his ?only? match turns out to involve one group of related tribes commonly thought to be late arrivals, and geographically nearest to Asia to boot... hence most subject to later geneflow). And he has been quoted by reporters as speaking of ?mongoloid invaders who exterminated the caucasoid first arrivals?. Other scientists speak of ?caucasoid? looking PaleoIndians, WITHOUT mentioning that these same traits are found among various modern & historical Native American tribes, and WITHOUT mentioning that rather than being typical only of ?Caucasoids? (they actually show up in ASIA before they are found in Europe), these traits are common among various Asian & Pacific populations... and are even found among some African groups! Much hooraw was made in the papers of mtDNA ?haplogroup X? as a link between ?ancient Americans? & Europeans, but it was rarely noted that the haplogroup is MORE common in the Near East than it is in Europe, and that it is also found in North Africa, Asia Minor, India, and SIBERIA?. and that the European haplogroup lineages form a DIFFERENT sub-clade than do the Native American ones, and have been phylogenetically shown to NOT be ancestral to them. Numerous scientists claimed that modern Indians didn?t possess the same head shapes as did PaleoIndians, stereotyping PaleoIndians as being narrowheaded (dolichocranic) & modern Native Americans as broadheaded (brachycranic), despite the fact that some PaleoIndians (like Marmes Rockshelter) were brachycranic & MANY modern Indians (including the majority of those east of the Mississippi & on the Northern Plains, & many South American Indians) were narrowheaded & that brachycranic Indians were actually in the minority overall! Scientists have quoted Christy Turner's old claim that all Native Americans possessed Sinodont dental patterns, like NE Asians, & did NOT match PaleoIndian dental patterns...when in reality Turner was shown to be mistaken, numerous Indian tribes have been shown to be Sundadont, or intermediate, and PaleoIndians have been shown to possess traits found in BOTH Sinodont & Sundadont populations. This suggests that either PaleoIndians arrived BEFORE Sinodonty evolved (~20,000 BP), or that they were a mix of peoples possessing both dental patterns.
Worse yet, while prominent scientists have shown themselves more than willing to make wild claims regarding PaleoIndians & Native Americans, even BEFORE study is conducted... they have not been as willing to offer correction when actual studies subsequently prove them wrong. Whether speaking of Kennewick, Penon Woman, or Lagoa Santa, the scientific craniometric truth behind their appearance has generally received less coverage than the ?pre-game speculation?.
Digressing a bit, I should note that I feel it helps if reviewers first had a good grasp of the facts. A prime example is the anonymous reviewer from Bogart, Georgia, who makes makes several glaring errors. ?Bogart? speaks of ?Caucasoid skeletal remains?, when PaleoIndians have been clearly shown to NOT be Caucasoid... merely to possess certain traits called ?proto-Caucasoid? by some researchers, and more accurately (given where they first evolved) called ?proto-MONGOLOID? by others. (A point to mention is that these self same traits are found in Australian Aborigines... hardly an indication of any ?Caucasoid? connection).
?Bogart? also claims that ?ancient artifacts? (& possibly the purportedly Caucasoid remains, his phrasing is a bit vague) ?predate the fabled land-bridge to Siberia in the last ice age?... yet the midpoint of the landbridge's existance (the last Glacial Maximum) predates the oldest proven archaeological site in the Americas (Monte Verde) by at least 7,000 years, it's first appearance is even earlier. For that matter, no landbridge was needed. The Bering strait can be WALKED over during most winters, when the ice freezes, and there is also evidence that humans in the Pacific had boats capable of crossing that distance well over 60,000 years ago.
?Bogart? also fatuously speaks of these purported ?remains & and ancient artifacts? as having more in common with ancient sites in Europe ?than with anything Asian or typically Native American?. The problem with this is that the oldest remains in the Americas match up with Pacific & East Asian peoples, NOT with Europeans (see various craniometric studies, particularly those of Joseph Powell or Walter Neves). (For that matter, the oldest ?anatomically modern?, or ?non-neanderthal?, human remains in Europe are actually a closer match to MODERN Native Americans than they are to modern Europeans, according to C. Loring Brace?s own data! It is likely relevant that genetic studies indicate major population replacements in Europe since the time of these first settlers).
As for artifacts, Clovis era artifacts have been tied to ?ancient European? peoples (i.e., ?Solutreans?) only by those with lots of theory but little fact to support it, or by those naively parroting them. The purported Solutrean tie has been discounted as a superficial similarity, differing on more points that it matches, by the ACTUAL Solutrean experts such as Lawrence Guy Straus. And pre-Clovis lithic artifacts in the Americas (Monte Verde, Cactus Hill, Topper, Meadowscroft, etc) are typically unifacial rather than Solutrean or Clovis type bifacials, and have been stated by the excavators of those sites to have NO similarity to Solutrean lithic industries.
?Bogart? says that Native Americans ?may not be the earliest immigrants to the Americas?, exposing ignorance... or bias... or wishful thinking... in one fell swoop. Currently, ALL evidence (DNA, linguistic, craniometric, lithic, etc) points to modern Native Americans as being descended from the earliest known inhabitants of the Americas. In those cases where claims of biological discontinuity have been espoused, closer scrutiny finds only inaccurate or out of context data behind such claims.
So for example, ?Bogart? erroneously states that ?DNA is found among some groups of "Native Americans" that matches a strand found only in Europe?. He is speaking of mitochondrial haplogroup X, which back at the time of the initial Kennewick furor was widely reported in the popular press (having been planted there by anthropologists & archaeologists WITHOUT biology degrees) as being a ?European? haplogroup totally absent from Asia. Nothing could be further from the truth (read actual scientific journal articles like Smith et al?s ?Distribution of mtDNA haplogroup X among Native North Americans? in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, or Reidla et al?s ?Origin and Difusion of mtDNA haplogroup X? in the American Journal of Human Genetics). Even at the time of the initial reports in the press it was known that haplogroup X was MORE COMMON & more diverse in the Near East, & that Native Americans had the same overall frequency of it as did Europeans (negating any thought of their having obtained it from ?partial ancient European? ancestry), and that the Native American & European lineages came from DIFFERENT sub-clades of haplogroup X. And rather than ?absent? in Asia, it had for the most part NOT YET BEEN LOOKED FOR in that region. One of the first direct attempts to search for it turned it up among a Siberian population (again, at the same level as in Europe & North America). Subsequent studies found it to be even further ranging (India, Africa, etc). For anyone to call it a ?European? haplogroup today is as misleading as it would be to call black hair merely a ?European? trait, despite it?s being MORE common in other parts of the world that predate the settlement of Europe.
I highly recommend this book. But I also recommend visiting your local university library, or searching the internet, for copies of scientific journal articles dealing with DNA (most of this is NOT available from other sources) & linguistics & archaeology & Ice Age conditions. By neccessity, ANY single book simplifies or glosses over certain things, without ample background, the reader can be inadvertantly misled. Other useful books would be Thomas Dillehay?s ?The Settlement of the Americas.? Sadly, more detailed books like those edited by Robson Bonnichsen of the Center for the Study of the First Americans are chronically out of print, poorly described (?conference proceedings? that DON?T say when the conference took place, or books that don?t give publication dates allowing you to determine whether they might be outdated or not, etc) or are unreasonably delayed in publication. But if you can find a copy, ?Ice Age Peoples of North America? is a good read. If it ever comes out (delayed twice already), ?PaleoAmerican Origins? promises to contain invaluable information.
Rating:
Summary: Who Owns Science?
Review: Thomas has added clarity to an often clouded and contraversial area. He points out the divde between traditional archaeology and the treatment of indiginous people, and offers the archaeologist an ethical parthway for his or her research. What more can I say but absolutely brilliant.
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