SEATTLE: Later this month a group of scientists will submit a plan on how they want to study the 350 bones of a 9,000-year-old skeleton found near the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington state.

The research will follow a long fight by US aboriginals and their supporters, who say the “Kennewick Man” is a native American who should be respectfully returned to his resting place without tests being performed.

The scientists argue that analysing the remarkably well- preserved skeleton could answer some important questions about how the first people came to North America.

A federal court recently agreed, setting aside a previous decision to classify the skeleton as native American. It ruled that scientists will be allowed to study the remains, and that the US Army Corps of Engineers violated the National Historic Preservation Act when it buried the skeleton’s discovery site.

The Engineers Corps plans to appeal that ruling.

After discovering the skeleton six years ago, the Corps handed it over to six native groups on the nearby Umatilla reservation, in accordance with a federal law, The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which says that all persons, or descendants of persons, who lived in North America before 1492 are considered native Americans.

“Our community has confidence the court will recognize the necessity to protect native people and avoid them being treated like objects of scientific curiosity,” the Umatilla natives said in a statement.

“Our religious beliefs, culture, and our adopted policies and procedures tell us that this individual must be re-buried as soon as possible. Our elders have taught us that once a body goes into the ground, it is meant to stay there until the end of time.”

The skeleton, which experts say is 90 per cent intact and was likely a 45-55-year-old man, has been stored in Seattle’s Burke Museum for the past six years. Umatilla tribe officials have denied archaeologists permission to perform chemical tests and DNA analysis that could establish the skeleton’s racial origin.

Scientists argue that the skeleton is part of a common American heritage, which should be open for all people to study.

Scientists hope Kennewick Man will provide evidence to challenge the popular theory that man first arrived in America by the Bering Straits and will also help prove that a vastly complex settlement pattern took place in America.

For the past 30 years or so, scientists have believed that the peopling of the American continent took place around 12,000 years ago, in three separate waves, from three separate parts of the world. But newer evidence suggests that a steady influx of small groups from different parts of the world occurred earlier.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.