[LINK] "Locked Away for Years, Skeleton's Secrets Rewrite Prehistory of North America"

[rfmcdonald]

National Geographic's Simon Worrall interviews Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist whose analysis of the Kennewick Man skeleton has led to some interesting conclusions about the sorts of migration common in ancient pre-Columbian North America (and beyond).

Kennewick Man's bone chemistry tells us that he's not from that area. The drinking water he grew up on is not drinking water of the type you'd get out of the Columbia River. He's not from Oregon or the state of Washington. He comes from much farther north. He's a long-distance traveler and a hunter.

We can also determine what his diet was. You are what you eat. And one thing is very clear, he did not grow up on the types of game you see in the Columbia River Basin, like deer or elk or rabbits. He's a marine mammal hunter. This guy is eating seals. Lots and lots of seals. That's what his bone chemistry tells us. And that just surprised the socks off me.

[. . .]

This is way before there were Inuit. But there are parallels in terms of the diet. In the final chapter of this volume, we look at his origin. He's certainly of Asian origin. His roots are going to be East Asian maritime hunter-gatherers dependent on seals. To get isotope values like you see in him, you at least have to get into coastal central Alaska or even more to the west. His facial features tie him strongly, in terms of the shape of the skull, with East Asian groups like the Ainu of ancient Japan, or Polynesians.