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By Boyce Rensberger
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 15, 1997; Page A01
Skeletons unearthed in several western states and as far east as
Minnesota are challenging the traditional view that the earliest
Americans all resembled today's Asians. The skeletons' skulls bear
features similar to those of Europeans, suggesting that Caucasoid
people were among the earliest humans to migrate into the New World
more than 9,000 years ago.
Anthropologists have known of such bones for years, but did not
fully appreciate their significance until reappraising them over the
last few months. The new analyses were prompted by the discovery
last summer of the newest addition to the body of evidence -- the
unusually complete skeleton of an "apparently Caucasoid" man who
died about 9,300 years ago near what is now Kennewick, Wash.
"It's an exciting time, and I think we're going to see some real
changes in the story about the peopling of North America," said
Dennis Stanford, an authority on early human history on this
continent at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of
Natural History. "I think we're going to see the whole complexion of
North American prehistory change real fast."
D. Gentry Steele, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University,
speculates that people of both races migrated into North America in
separate waves, possibly thousands of years apart. Where they met,
he suspects, they "made love, not war," and thus both populations
may be ancestral to some or all of today's Native Americans.
Until now, most anthropologists thought that the earliest humans to
inhabit the Americas all resembled today's Asiatic peoples,
popularly called Mongoloids. Prehistoric Americans are thought to
have migrated from Siberia into Alaska and then spread southward,
probably during an ice age when sea levels were hundreds of feet
lower than now, exposing a "land bridge."
Now, however, many anthropologists believe that early colonization
of the Americas was a more complex process, involving not only
Mongoloids but Caucasoids as well, probably in separate migrations.
Some Native American peoples today resemble the people of Asia and
some are more European. Much of this mixture is the product of
intermarriage in recent centuries, but some may date back thousands
of years.
The reappraisal of prehistoric Americans also is providing an
explanation for the Ainu people of Japan. A distinctly
European-looking population with light skin, wavy hair and heavy
beards, the Ainu were living on islands off Asia thousands of years
ago, when Mongoloid people from the mainland crossed the water to
found the modern Japanese nation.
Today's Ainu -- historically a despised minority group, many of whom
now live on reservations -- have long puzzled anthropologists
because they lived so far from any other known region of Caucasoid
habitation and because people of more typical Asiatic physical form
filled a large intervening territory.
Anthropologists now suspect -- but cannot prove -- that the presence
of European-type people in Japan and in North America in prehistoric
times indicates that the race spread far from its presumed homeland
in western Asia much earlier than had been thought.
These emerging interpretations are based on a scientific technique
called craniofacial morphometric analysis. It involves detailed
study of the shape of the skull and face, using a sophisticated
method called multivariate analysis. In some cases, more than 60
different dimensions of a skull are measured and compared with
comparable dimensions considered typical of specific racial groups.
Anthropologists have established a range of measurements considered
characteristic of the majority of members in each major group.
Most anthropologists agree that races, as most people use the term,
are socially defined groupings with no scientific definition. No
physical traits are exclusively the property of one race or another.
Still, anthropologists agree that certain combinations of
measurements, chiefly of the face and skull, can be used to
determine whether individuals belong to one population or another.
This is true primarily for groups that have been separated
geographically for thousands of years.
Caucasoid people, for example, tend to have longer, more angular
faces and beakier noses, while Mongoloid people typically have
rounder skulls and smaller noses. Certain shapes of teeth also can
figure in the analysis. So-called shovel-shaped incisors, for
example, are common among modern Asiatic peoples and relatively rare
among others.
Using a combination of measurements, it is often possible to
identify the race of an individual when nothing is left but a skull,
said Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the National
Museum of Natural History. Such analyses are routine in police work.
Owsley, a nationally recognized authority in this field, has
examined some of the evidence for early Caucasoid presence in the
Americas and believes it is fairly convincing. "There have been
seven well-preserved skeletons that are securely dated to 8,000
years or older," Owsley said. Two have been reburied at the
insistence of American Indian groups who claimed the remains were of
their ancestors. "When you look at the craniofacial morphology of
the five that are still accessible, they are certainly very
different from today's Native Americans," Owsley said. "They are a
whole lot different from contemporary Native Americans."
Perhaps the most intensively examined of the skeletons is that of a
man who died about 9,400 years ago and was laid to rest in Spirit
Cave, Nev. His remains were discovered in 1940 but their age was not
determined until last year. The man's head and shoulder were
mummified, preserving much of the skin in that area. He was wearing
moccasins and was wrapped in woven fabric.
Owsley recently examined the remains in great detail and, in his
report to the Nevada State Museum, where the skeleton is housed,
said, "It does have a 'European' or 'archaic Caucasoid' look because
morphometrically it is most similar to the Ainu from Japan and a
medieval period Norse population."
Still, Owsley cautioned, this does not mean the man's ancestors were
from Europe. "I'm reluctant to say he's a white guy, but he's
certainly very different from modern Asians and Native Americans,"
Owsley said. One possibility, he speculated, is that an ancient
proto-caucasoid population lived in northern Asia and offshoots from
it moved east to Japan and across the land bridge to the Americas.
"It is clear that European-like people were previously more
widespread in Asia than is presently the case," said Richard L.
Jantz, an anthropologist specializing in prehistoric Americans at
the University of Tennessee. "It is possible that the distribution
extended into Northeast Asia and that some of them were positioned
to enter America."
"To me it seems pretty clear that Northeast Asia, up to about 9,000
years ago, was inhabited by people who were unlike the people who
live there today, and that the early people were more 'Caucasoid' in
appearence. At the present time, I don't think the evidence is
sufficient to argue that this similarity results from descent from a
common ancestor, but it is certainly possible," Jantz said.
Some anthropologists reject the Caucasoid label for the prehistoric
skeletons. Donald K. Grayson of the University of Washington, for
example, says that using the word raises "a red flag, suggesting
that whites were here earlier and Indians were here later." That, he
contends, implies that the ancient peoples who reached the New World
were like today's Europeans or American whites.
In fact, as some other anthropologists note, the "apparently
Caucasoid" skeletons may represent a physical type that was not
ancestral to today's Europeans but may have given rise to the Ainu
and other groups, such as the Polynesians, who do not resemble
modern Asians but do have a somewhat Caucasoid cast.
In other words, the scientists say it is possible that it is only a
coincidence that the ancient skeletons have features that resemble
those of Europeans. The long heads and angular faces may have arisen
independently in a strictly Asian population.
Further evidence to answer such questions lies in the skeletal
remains that have been found and in others presumably yet to emerge,
both in North America and in Asia.
At least two of the ancient skeletons from this country have been
reburied, both at the insistence of various American Indian ethnic
groups who claimed that because the remains were found in a region
their people inhabited in recent centuries, the bones must be of
their ancestors.
Because these skeletons are so important scientifically, Jantz,
Owsley, Stanford and many other anthropologists are resisting
pressure to rebury them. Indian tribes, like nearly all ethnic
groups worldwide, have migrated so much in recent centuries that it
is seldom possible to link any living person with a specific
geographic region for more than a few centuries, they argue.
The most recent controversy involves the Kennewick, Wash., bones.
"This individual is a teacher for all ages," Owsley said. "There's
just so much we could learn from a detailed study of him."
One of the most complete ancient skeletons found in this country,
the bones were immediately recognized as Caucasoid, leading those
who first examined it to think they were the remains of a European
settler. A new method of radiocarbon dating that consumes only tiny
amounts of the sample subsequently revealed the man lived 8,400
years ago.
To local Indian groups, particularly the Umatillas who live in that
part of Washington, the age simply confirmed their belief that the
skeleton was one of their ancestors. "We know that our people have
been part of this land since the beginning of time," a Umatilla
leader wrote in a position paper.
The Indian request for reburial was made to the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, on whose land the remains were found. The corps was about
to comply when Owsley, Stanford and other anthropologists filed suit
last October in federal District Court in Portland, Ore. They said
the corps was violating the Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act of 1990. The scientists argued that the Umatillas
had not properly established that the skeleton was related to them
and that, in any event, the law allows scientific study before
reburial.
At the hearing, the corps said it had made no decision to rebury the
skeleton and would not decide for some months. The judge ordered the
corps to give two-week notice to the scientists before reburial. The
skeleton remains in a vault pending further action.
THE SITES
Where ancient, non-Mongoloid skeletons have been found in North
America.
Kennewick, Wash.
9,300 years old
Browns Valley, Minn
9,300 years old
Spirit Cave, Nev.
At least 9,200 years old
Gordon Creek, Colo.
9,700 years old
Wilson-Leonard, Tex.
9,500-10,000 years old
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