MYSTERY OF THE FIRST AMERICANS
Originally broadcast on February 15, 2000, this film documents the discovery and ensuing controversy over Kennewick Man. In 1996, near Kennewick, Washington, a suspected murder victim is identified by forensic anthropologists as “Caucasian,” but turns out to be almost 10,000 years old. For fifty years our picture of prehistoric America has rested on the premise that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas were east Asians, the ancestors of today's Native Americans. But the discovery of the Kennewick Man, along with several other startling finds in recent years, has thrown that once widely accepted idea into question and revolutionized the science of paleoanthropology. It has also embroiled scientists in a bitter conflict with Native American groups who want the scientific study of early Americans halted. Who and what do Kennewick Man and others represent? NOVA follows the efforts of paleoanthropologists work to decode the story in the bones of people who died 10,000 years ago. For the companion website to the film, please go to:
- What have anthropologists learned about Kennewick man by “reading” his skeleton?
- What surprised anthropologists about the shape of Kennewick man’s face and skull?
- How and why did the Umatilla people claim the skeleton of Kennewick man?
4. How did anthropologists feel about the Umatilla claim & what did Chatters do before the skeleton was claimed?
5. Do you agree that it is a human right to know about the human past?
6. Explain the pre-existing theory, the “gospel of American archaeology,” of how the first humans arrived in North America.
7.What evidence from South America challenged this theory?
8.Why did anthropologists start to study the Alaskan coastline & what did they find?
9.What did anthropologists learn about the 12,000 year old person by “reading” his teeth?
10.Who was Spirit Cave Man and why is he important?
11.Describe the traits considered more Caucasoid than Native American.
12.What stirred up racial conflict after Kennewick man’s facial reconstruction?
13.Who are these 10,000 year old skeletons most like?
14.What is the key to understanding the first Americans?
15.What does the archaeology of the Alaskan coast reveal to us about the early Americans?
16.How is identity politics still part of the story of early Americans?