Native American groups campaigning to have a 9300-year-old skeleton
reinterred—rather than treated as an archaeological specimen—won’t
be pleased with the results of a study commissioned by the US Department of the
Interior. After examining the bones of “Kennewick Man”, found in Washington
State, anthropologists say his closest relatives were Polynesians and the Ainu
of northern Japan. Pagan groups have also claimed the bones as their own,
arguing that Kennewick Man was of Norse descent. But the new study concludes
that links with European or modern Native American populations are “remote”.
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