 The
U.S. Interior Department on Monday said a controversial
9,000-year-old human skeleton found in Washington state
belongs to five Indian tribes who say he is an ancestor
who should rest in peace rather than be studied by scientists.
DNA
tests failed to fix the racial origin of the skeleton,
dubbed Kennewick Man after the town in southern Washington
state near where it was found in the Columbia River, leaving
geography and tribal folklore to prove the bones should
go to the Indians, the agency said.
``Our
investigation was to be a searching one and we have left
no stone unturned ... that would cast light on this issue,''
said John Leshy, U.S. solicitor of the interior, in a
teleconference with journalists.
A
group of eight scientists had sued to stop the Indian
tribes from claiming the 380 pieces of bone because tribal
representatives vowed to rebury them, precluding further
study on one of the earliest known human skeletons in
the United States.
An
attorney for the scientists, Alan Schneider, vowed to
appeal should a federal judge in Portland, Oregon, back
the government's decision to award the tribes the bones.
Dubbed
``Ancient One'' by the tribes, the bones are among the
oldest ever found in North America and could shed light
on the origin of the continent's first residents, long
thought to have emigrated from Asia or Eurasia, perhaps
by way of Alaska.
``Our
original lawsuit challenged the government's decision
to grant custody to the tribe, based on insufficient evidence,''
Schneider told Reuters. ``They don't have any more evidence
now.''
Under
the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation
Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 Kennewick Man is considered Native
American because he predates documented European settlement,
despite some dubious claims that he was a wayward Viking.
Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt said the bones were ''culturally
affiliated'' with area tribes and that the Indian Claims
Commission found the federal park on which they were found
aboriginal land -- at one point housing various tribes.
Government
officials concede that they have no firm evidence to support
either conclusion, but neither have they found any evidence
to outweigh the current geographic location of the tribes
and their oral histories.
``Neither
(conclusion) is entirely crystal clear,'' Leshy said.
The
Interior Department said bone fragments sent to Yale University,
University of Michigan and University of California-Davis
for tests failed to yield DNA for analysis, a practice
the tribes deem highly offensive.
The
bones have been held in Seattle at the University of Washington's
Burke Museum for the last two years, technically under
the custody of the Army Corps of Engineers.
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