his page houses excerpts from blogs in which I talk about this sort of semi-scientific subject, usually when it's in the news in some controversial fashion.  I'm not so into the subjects that I'm digging up news stories about them just on general principles; I'm mostly waiting for them to come to me.

In other words, don't expect a tremendous number of updates to this page.

Also, I am aware that anthropology is not the same thing as archeology, except in the mind of the uninformed masses. I just lump them in together since 1) most people don't know the difference, 2) it pisses off anthropologists and archeologists.

More recent articles are added on top.

December 11, 2002

This article on British museums refusing to hand over their entire aboriginal collections for burial caught my attention.  The article doesn't really say exactly what the requests encompass, but I'll take this opening to go off on the subject.  Turning a random conversational to my own evil ends, and using it to dominate the conversation.  Just like that annoying guy at the party last week.

The Native Americans (AKA Indians) in the US have won several court cases and basically any ancient human remains, no matter how old, are requested for reburial.  This obviously pisses off archeologists, since it's pretty much impossible to study the history of a culture when every other thing you dig up from 6000 years ago is said to be someone's ancestor and they run off and throw this priceless archeological relic back into the ground. Usually smashing it up first so just in case you dig it up again at some point, it won't be of much use to you.

I can see if you have a specimen from a hundred or two hundred years ago; that could literally be someone's great grandmother/father, but over 500 years it's a fossil, and no one has a legitimate claim to it.  My grandmother was 1/16 Cherokee, so I'm 1/64th at best, but technically related, if very distantly.  But so what?  Should I be demanding reburial of some dig site in Virginia?  Please.  It's some old bones, it's got nothing to do with anyone alive today.  It's useful for science and study, and that's what it should be used for.

A complicating factor is a lot of recent finds along the lines of non-Indian ancient Americans.  They just recently found a skull in Mexico that appears more like South American than North American Indian in shape.  So did the first Americans look like South or North?  Did they settle the whole continent quickly?  Who evolved to look differently, the Indians we see in North or South now, or are they both adaptations on the initial unknown settlers.  And where did those people come from?

A key aspect to this skull in Mexico is that since it was found there, rather than in say New Jersey, is that they don't have some tribe of about 31 people demanding it be buried beneath the fourth slot machine from the right, before it can be properly-studied. In the US the Indian groups have really pushed hard to get those things taken away from the scientists and reburied.  They claim it's their culture and religion and reverence for the dead, etc.  Which may be true, I'm no expert on their mythos, nor am I real respectful of any particular superstitions. But their religion or not, it's very self-serving, as they work to stymie study into the true earliest Americans, who may well turn out to not be Indians after all.

I don't know if that would matter in terms of the various legal rights Indians have now; I mean they aren't given their few advantages (semi-sovereignty from the US, which is why they can sell fireworks and build casinos) now solely because they were here first of all.  They are given them since they were murdered by the millions and signed treaties with the white man, treaties that the white man pretty well ignored as soon as it was convenient to do so.  How would finding out exactly who first came from Asia or Europe to settle North American change any of that?

I think it's just more a matter of pride to think they were first, so therefore any body found on the continent, no matter how old, must be one of their ancestors.  And if no one can study the remains, then that's never going to be disproven. 

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