1. AN EARLY HISTORY MYSTERY
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2. Click to see what they saw in the mud.
An Accidental Discovery
On July 28, 1996, two men were watching the annual boat races at Columbia Park in Kennewick, Washington. They found part of a human skull on the bottom of the Columbia River about ten feet from shore. Later searches turned up a nearly complete male skeleton that is known as Kennewick Man.

3. BACK

4. Just who is the Kennewick man?
An archaeologist decided the bones were ancient but might not be Native American. He sent a piece of bone to a laboratory to be dated. The final date indicated an age of 8,400 years, making Kennewick Man one of the oldest skeletons found in the Americas. But if it is true that these remains are thousands of years old, and are not Native American, then who was Kennewick Man? This question raised a number of other questions:
How did he die?
How did he end up on the river bank?
How do they know
how old the skeleton
really is?

5. CARBON DATING
Radiocarbon years before the present (top) are translated into calendar years before the present (bottom). For example, an artifact that is 11,000 radiocarbon years old is actually 13,000 calendar years old.
Radiocarbon dating works because all living things absorb carbon. They take up two types: carbon 14 and carbon 12. While an animal or plant is alive, the ratio of carbon reflects the ratio present in the atmosphere. Once it dies, the ratio changes. So scientists look at the change in the ratio.
Carbon 14 is radioactive (but not dangerous) and undergoes decay, but carbon 12 is stable. During a creature’s lifetime, it will replenish carbon 14. After death, the amount drops, and the ratio between carbon 14 and carbon 12 falls. Scientists then can determine the age of an object.
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6. Items found with the Kennewick man.
NEWS STORY
Someone found the bones of a man that died a very long time ago. The bones were found near a river in Washington. The government has taken them and native Americans want them back.
Native Americans think that the bones are from a man that used to be one of them. They want to bury the bones. A scientist says the bones looks more like a modern person than like a Native American.
The scientist was surprised the bones looked like a modern person. It changed his way of thinking. He took the bones and figured out how old they were. They are over 9,000 years old. They found a point from a spear in the bones. No one knows what kind of person the bones came from. They do not know how the person ended up at the river. Scientists say the bones could help them answer these questions.

7. FINAL REPORT frontal bone fracture
We conducted a physical examination of the Kennewick human remains at the Burke Museum, Seattle, Washington, on April 25-26, Traumatic injuries include a wound in the right ilium that resulted in an infection and a small well-healed fracture to the left frontal bone. The evidence indicates that these are the remains of a single individual who was buried at the site instead of being left to decompose. Our analysis clearly shows that the skeleton had been exposed on the riverbank for a short period of time prior to discovery.

8. GET TO THE POINT!
The spear point they found in the Kennewick man’s bones was very much like the tips found on these Clovis points. In fact a spear tip was found along with the Kennewick man’s skeleton which he may have been carrying in a pouch.

9. He bore no resemblance to any modern American Indian.
Forensic scientists reconstructed the face of the skull. The Kennewick Man's skull features do not fit any known populations.
The Kennewick man was about 175 cm tall, a vigorous middle-aged man who for years had carried a spear point lodged in his hip. He had a long face, a long low skull, and a prominent nose.
He bore no resemblance to any modern American Indian.
How an artist
thinks he looked.

10. without hair
with hair

12. BERING LAND BRIDGE THEORY
Early people from northeastern Asia crossed the land bridge between Siberia and North America, which existed during the last Ice Age, when sea levels were much lower. They moved into Canada and then to other parts of North America. This took thousands of years.
PACIFIC COASTAL ROUTE THEORY
People from southeastern Asia followed the coastline in small boats. Scientists think that people could reach the tip of South America in as little as 100 years in boats.
PACIFIC CROSSING THEORY
People from Australia and the islands of the South Pacific continued traveling east by boat and eventually reached the Americas and then went inland.
ATLANTIC CROSSING THEORY
Early people in Europe crossed the Atlantic by following the edge of the glaciers that then covered the North Sea. They then went inland. This took thousands of years.

13. The GROUND SLOTH, woolly MAMMOTH, and SABOR TOOTHED TIGER all roamed the American continent thousands of years ago.

14. How did people get to North America?
Use the information from these slides and our study of how the Americas were peopled to complete the “Public Issue Writing”. Think about the following questions as you decide what should be done with the remains of the Kennewick man.
How did people get to North America?
Who was the Kennewick man?
Should the Kennewick man’s remains be given to Native Americans for burial?