When Worlds Collide

Human remains so encountered arc always of concern—"Who was it?" and "Who did it?"—so the students called the police. In an effort to answer those two questions the police turned the bones over to the local coroner. Burial grounds of Native Americans arc sometimes encountered in that part of the Northwest, and the Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act, passed in 1990, required that any such remains be returned for burial to the tribe to which they belonged. The bones appeared to be of great age, and so it was assumed that the skeleton must be one of a Native American, since settlers of European origin reached the West Coast only a few centuries ago. But closer study suggested otherwise.
To solve the puzzle, the bones were examined by an anthropologist, [ames Chatters, a specialist in skeletal remains of human beings. Such professionals can determine sex, size, age, cause of death, and racial type with considerable accuracy. Examination showed the skeleton to be that of a 50-ycar-old male of medium build, his teeth well worn and a stone arrowhead imbedded in his hip bone. Radiometric methods determined that the man died about nine thousand years ago long before human beings of European origin first arrived in the New World, according to conventional historical accounts. Yet the skeleton had Caucasoid features. Chatters took the bones to another anthropologist for an opinion, without giving a hint of his analysis, and was told that the skeleton was of a Caucasian male. Even when Chatters revealed the age of the bones, the second anthropologist stuck to her original identification. A third anthropologist familiar with the skeletal features of modern tribes of Native Americans concluded that the skeleton could not be assigned to any one of them.
Finding the nearly ninc-thousand-ycar-old skeleton of a Caucasoid male in any part of the New World is puzzling in the extreme. Traditionally, anthropologists have thought that the first human beings to inhabit the Western Hemisphere crossed from Siberia to Alaska about 15,000 years ago. Some now believe that the event occurred much earlier, but in any case these immigrants from Siberia were of the Mongolian racial type, as arc Native Americans—not Caucasoids. Anthropologists know that a few nameless fishermen from Western Europe came to the eastern shores of the New World before Columbus's arrival in 1492, as did the Vikings, but Caucasians did not come in large numbers until early in the sixteenth century.
So who was the Caucasoid Kcnncwick Man who arrived thousands of years before the Vikings, Columbus, Cortcz, and Pizarro? Needless to say, this is a most exciting and important question, not only for anthropologists and historians but for many nonprofessionals as well. There have even been some speculations that Caucasoid people may have been the original inhabitants of the New World. Thus, for scientists and others interested in such historical questions, further studies on Kcnncwick Man arc overwhelmingly important.
For a while it looked as though these investigations would never take place. In an effort to comply with the federal Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act, the Army Corps of Engineers assumed control of the bones, placed them in a vault, and refused to allow any further examination of them by scientists. The Umatilla tribe, who live near the site of discovery, asked to have the bones returned to them, in which case the skeleton would be secretly buried and never be available for study. A group of anthropologists went to court to stop the Corps from complying with the tribe's request. The anthropologists claimed that the Umatillas were not in that part of the Northwest when Kcnncwick Man lived; hence, he could not be one of their ancestors. And of course his Caucasoid skeletal features led to the same conclusion. Thus, the available scientific evidence is that Kcnncwick Man was not a Umatillan or any other Native American.
In response to that hypothesis, a leader of the tribe, Armand Min-thorn, stated this position:
Our ciders have taught us that once a body goes into the ground, it is meant to stay there until the end of time.... If this individual is truly over 9,000 years old, that only substantiates our belief that he is Native American. From our oral histories, we know that our people have been part of this land since the beginning of time. We do not believe that our people migrated here from another continent, as the scientists do. ... Scientists believe that because the individual's head measurements do not match ours, he is not Native American. Our elders have told us that Indian people did not always look the way we look today. Some scientists say that if this individual is not studied further, we, as Indians, will be destroying evidence of our history. We already know our history. It is passed on to us through our elders and through our religious practices.
As of early 2001, the matter remains unsettled. Nevertheless the two perspectives—the anthropologists' and the Native Americans'— provide a classic example of two polar points of view that I will analyze throughout this book. One point of view rests on the questions and methods of science. The other rests on cultural beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation. One side seeks a solution to a problem of intense interest to scientists and historians; the other side docs not recognize that there is a problem that needs a solution.
This dispute over the future of Kcnncwick Man represents a clash between two immiscible patterns of thought. Another example (reported in the New Yor^ Times on August 29, 1997) comes from Afghanistan, where the Taliban, a Muslim sect, have gained control of much of the nation and arc enforcing conformity to the Sharia, sacred Islamic law. According to this code, thieves must be punished by having their hands and feet cut off; couples caught in adulterous acts must be stoned to death; and if women do not cover themselves from head to foot, the young Taliban enforcers deal them a severe flogging. The young zealots have even beaten women for wearing white socks or plastic sandals.
The head of the General Department for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Alhaj Maulavi Qalamuddin, explains the Taliban point of view: "Some women want to show their feet and ankles. They arc immoral women. They want to give a hint to the opposite sex." This must be controlled to "prevent impure thoughts in men"; "if we consider sex to be as dangerous as a loaded Kalashnikov rifle, it is because it is the source of all immorality." The rules of the Sharia relating to women arc harsh in other respects, by late-twenticth-ccntury standards in the West. Women arc prohibited from working or obtaining an education or even receiving medical treatment, and after puberty they arc almost entirely secluded in their homes.