The World of Emperor Gon of Carthage
"Kennewick Man"
Emperor Gon of Carthage
March 10, 2001
Discovery of the Century
In 1996, a skeleton was recovered from the Columbia River in Washington State, U.S.A. The remains were discolored and looked very old, and at first it was thought to be the remains of a European immigrant from long ago. However, an old arrowhead was imbedded in the pelvis and so, feeling that it was suspicious, the local police sent it to a local archaeologist, Jim Chatters, for radiocarbon dating. It revealed that the remains date back 9300 years. Thereafter, the remains were named after the place where they were recovered and became known as the Kennewick Man. From here, a series of bizarre lawsuit battles began.
 The radiocarbon dating was carried out using the method of measuring the half-life of the radioisotope of the carbon called carbon 14. Since living creatures are constantly metabolizing, the proportion of carbon and carbon 14 inside one's body is fixed while alive. When such creatures die, metabolism stops and carbon 14, a radioisotope, starts to collapse and to decrease.
This dating technique is widely used and sufficiently reliable. Supposing the radiocarbon dating results of 9300 years were correct, Kennewick Man becomes the oldest and the best-preserved remains found in North America. However, as for the characteristic of its skull, it was apparently different from those of American Indians, appearing to be very Caucasian. Jim Chatters, surprised at the dating results, started to restore its head. As a result, a well-balanced Caucasian face, quite similar to the actor, Patrick Stewart emerged. In America, restoring a face from the skull of an unidentified body is frequently carried out and such results are extremely precise and trustworthy. According to Jim Chatters, Kennewick Man was 40 to 55 years old and about 175 centimeter (5'7" feet) tall. He was a stylish person with a well balanced build.
Who discovered the American Continent?
 The "new continent" was discovered some 500 years ago by Christopher Columbus who set out on the Atlantic to establish a new route to India. As a result, the existence of the new continent became known among the Europeans.
Such is the history we all learned in our history classes. But the truth is that the Vikings had already reached the continent before Columbus and many small colonies had been established.
Furthermore, it has become quite evident that the Phoenicians had also reached the continent before Columbus. The Phoenicians prospered by means of ocean trade in the Mediterranean before the birth of Christ. The Phoenician city-state of Carthage was the center of the Mediterranean world until it was sacked by the Romans in 146 B.C. Records show that the Carthaginians traveled around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, thousands of years before Vasco da Gama did. Caucasians had reached the new continent far before previously thought. Could Kennewick Man have been one of those people from Europe or the Mediterranean periphery who reached America long ago?
Battle over the remains
When Jim Chatters asserted that the remains were of a Caucasian male, the local Umatilla Indian tribe fiercely protested against it. They claimed that Caucasians could not have existed in America 9300 years ago, and that the remains are of their ancestor. They also expressed that claiming that the remains were Caucasian was nothing but a blaspheme against their ancestors. The Umatilla tribe filed a lawsuit for the possession and the reburial of the remains under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
Meanwhile, Dr. Doug Owsley of the Smithsonian Institute, who thought this discovery to be of utmost importance, requested that the US Army transfer the remains to the Smithsonian for a detailed survey. He was doing research on the Spirit caveman found in Nevada, another find with characteristics different from modern American Indians. However, the remains were confiscated by the Army Corps, in response to the Umatilla's claim, and so never reached Dr. Owsley. And what was more, after the US Army Corps of Engineers gave the scientists only 5 days permission to investigate, they started to cover the site where the Kennewick Man was recovered with earth and sand spending as much as $175,000 in the effort. A series of actions by the US Army Corps caused an uproar among the general public as well as among the scientists. For what purpose did the US Army Corps intervene? Strangely enough, the Army claimed that such action was simply to protect the riverbank and also to protect the site from grave robbers and plunderers.
Needless to say, the scientists did not approve of the US Army Corps' actions and instantly filed a lawsuit to halt such action. This appeal received general support. Local congressman Doc Hastings submitted a bill regulating the Army Corps' action and had it approved in both the Upper and Lower Houses.
The Army Corps, however, disregarded this bill completely. And immediately before the bill was to be enforced, they completely buried the excavation site with 2000 tons of earth and sand.
The scientists were planning to excavate its periphery entirely to inspect whether other artifacts or any other skeletons were buried alongside. Unfortunately, such intension was undermined by the Army Corps' action.
A robbery case that called in the FBI
By this time, the lawsuit over the proprietorship of the remains had grown to include 5 tribes and 8 scientists and was continuing endlessly. During the lawsuit, the remains were temporarily put under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government and it was decided to store them at the Burke Museum in Seattle until proprietorship was clarified. On Oct. 1998, before moving the remains to the museum, a catalogue was made for its transportation, the duration of which lasted more than 21 hours. During this inspection of the remains, it became clear that of the 6 fragments that the femur was divided into, four were missing.
The last time all 6 pieces of the femur were confirmed to be together was when Dr. Chatters spread the bones out on a table to record a video before the remains were confiscated by the Army Corps.
Who stole the femur? This year (2001) the FBI set out on an investigation, but it does not seem that the truth will be easily revealed.
Deepened mystery
 At first, it was thought that the Kennewick Man had the characteristics of a Caucasian. However, the anatomical inspections that followed suggested a strong relationship between the Kennewick Man and the Polynesians or the native Ainu of Japan. The modern Ainu people are said to have derived from the Jomon people. The Jomon era is the first era in the history of Japan and the people of that era are known in scientific circles for having been the first people to invent pottery. It is also thought that they derived from the same origin as the ancient Mongoloids who are possibly the present day Polynesians.
Is Kennewick Man the ancestor of the modern American Indians? Or was he a Caucasian from Europe who reached the continent before Columbus? Or perhaps
was he one of the Jomon or a Polynesian who crossed the Pacific? The conclusion scientists had reached is to analyze the DNA. Fortunately, the scientists' decision was approved and the DNA testing began in May 2000. However, all the DNA tests have failed due to mineralization and contamination. Such failure in DNA testing caused another commotion over the missing femur. This was because the femur was the largest part of the remains that may have contain enough DNA without much contamination to examine the origin of the Kennewick Man.
American Indians who wanted the remains to be reburied now face a serious dilemma. They are against the DNA testing because it would be a blaspheme against their ancestors, and such reasoning could be the basis for a motive to commit theft.
However, even if the American Indians win the possession of the remains, they can't bury the remains with the missing femur. Religiously, they are not permitted to leave some parts of the body unburied.
On the other hand, the scientists also have a motive to steal the femur that contains enough DNA to carry out the testing. But even if the scientists were accountable for the missing femur, they couldn't carry out the DNA testing in secret. And so, such a theft would not further their cause.
The mystery of by whom and for what purpose the femur was stolen only deepens. On Jan. 2, 2001, the 8 scientists filed a damages law suit against the Army Corps. Oral pleading is scheduled for June 17.
Is the Kennewick Man one of the Jomon?
Where did the Kennewick Man come from? A difficult question to answer. Answering this question would probably answer the old and new question, that is to say the unanswered question of who was the first person to arrive on the American Continent.
Traditionally, it has been assumed that Asian people crossed the Bering Strait, which was then connected during the last Ice Age. Consequently those people spread throughout the American continent to become the ancestors of the American Indians.
However, it has become quite certain that there were other migration routes. Among those routes, the race that attracts most attention is the Jomon people of Japan. The fact that the Kennewick Man is anatomically close to the Jomon people arouses one's great interest.
Ever since the discovery of the Sannai Maruyama ruin in the Aomori prefecture of Japan, it has come to be known that the Jomon people had a much more advanced culture than they had previously been thought to have, and were active in trade. Traditionally, the Jomon people were thought to have been small-scale hunter-gatherers. But from the ruins of Sannai Maruyama, even a tall building like a huge watchtower and a large-scale settlement community have been discovered.
In August 1996, pottery was found on the island of Efate in the Republic of Vanuatu, South Pacific which was confirmed by Prof. Shinoto and others to be Aomori-made.
Dr. Evans of the Smithsonian Institute hypothesizes that even the Valdivia pottery of Ecuador, the oldest pottery found on the American continent is Jomon pottery. This pottery is made of local soil but the pattern of the pottery is identical with that of Jomon pottery. Also, many clay figures called "Venus of Valdivia" are found in Valdivia. These clay figures are exactly like the clay figure called "Venus of Jomon" that were unearthed from the Tanabatake ruin in Japan. Furthermore, rock figures quite similar to those of the Kami Kuroiwa ruin known as Venus or Goddess stones with their straw-rope patterned cut line were recovered from Valdivia.
What do these facts indicate? There is a high possibility that the Kennewick Man was one of the Jomon. In other words, the first people to have discovered the American continent may have been the Jomon people. Needless to say, DNA testing will be necessary to confirm this. The reason why the Army Corps tenaciously hindered the scientists from surveying the discovery area of the Kennewick Man may lie here. It may be that the Army Corps fears that the Kennewick Man will be revealed to be the ancestor of a particular group of people, such as the Jomon people. Perhaps they fear that if groups other than the modern tribes had existed on the American continent long ago, the relationship between the American Indians and the US nation, whose purpose is the acknowledging and protecting of the rights of the aborigines, would itself become ambiguous. Needless to say, there is no doubt that the modern American Indians are the oldest aborigines in existence in the US, even if it is concluded that the Kennewick Man was one of the Jomon. Therefore the native American Indians will never lose their rights as aborigines. Since the conundrum of the Kennewick Man relates to the racial background of the first group of people who landed on the new continent, the Army Corps may want to terminate this battle by leaving it unsettled.
As seen here, there is also a motive on the Army's side to steal the femur. Will the FBI be able to find the femur? In any case, DNA testing holds the key to solving this mystery.
Translated by Rie Ishida
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