I really savored every page of this book. One of the best I have EVER read on both an OVERVIEW of american prehistory, and american archaeology. Addresses all the important questions, and most importantly to me, the author seems very unbiased. At FIRST i thought he was going to be definitely a Pro-Native American viewpoint, since Prof. Vine Deloria wrote the foreward. However, although the authoer is PC, he is in such a way as not to be "in your face" with it. I think a very balanced book. I will keep my copy handy and refer to it often, as it is a truly VALUABLE resource! I understand more of the political ramification so of the government vs the Indians now, and the author told it in a way so as not to bore you to tears. Very well done, and my sincere, heartfelt compliments to the author, for a job well done.

Dr. Thomas' discussion on pages 57-58 of the Army Medical Museum's role in collecting human remains is misleading. The Museum (now the National Museum of Health & Medicine) was established in 1862, during the American Civil War, to begin the study of military medicine and surgery in wartime. It was not established at the urging of Professor Agassiz. US Army Surgeon General Hammond's orders pertained specifically to collecting the remains of Union and Confederate soldiers, who were overwhelmingly white, to study surgery before the era of x-rays or aseptic surgery. Thousands of specimens were sent into the Museum, including General Daniel Sickles' leg, which he personally had shipped after it was struck by a cannon ball and amputated. The specimens were studied and used to compile the six-volume study, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. After the war, the Museum did expand its collecting focus and collected Indian anthropological artifacts and remains. The artifacts were deposited with the Smithsonian Institution, based on an agreement the Smithsonian proposed in 1869. Human remains were transferred to the Medical Museum, where they were kept and studied side by side with those of American soldiers. The Museum continued collecting Native American remains until the late nineteenth century when the role was returned to the Smithsonian Institution, where it remains today.

The star rating was insisted on by Amazon's computer - this note only pertains to Dr. Thomas' pages on the Army Medical Museum.

Michael Rhode, Archivist
National Museum of Health & Medicine

Dr. Thomas' discussion on pages 57-58 of the Army Medical Museum's role in collecting human remains is misleading. The Museum (now the National Museum of Health & Medicine) was established in 1862, during the American Civil War, to begin the study of military medicine and surgery in wartime. It was not established at the urging of Professor Agassiz. US Army Surgeon General Hammond's orders pertained specifically to collecting the remains of Union and Confederate soldiers, who were overwhelmingly white, to study surgery before the era of x-rays or aseptic surgery. Thousands of specimens were sent into the Museum, including General Daniel Sickles' leg, which he personally had shipped after it was struck by a cannon ball and amputated. The specimens were studied and used to compile the six-volume study, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. After the war, the Museum did expand its collecting focus and collected Indian anthropological artifacts and remains. The artifacts were deposited with the Smithsonian Institution, based on an agreement the Smithsonian proposed in 1869. Human remains were transferred to the Medical Museum, where they were kept and studied side by side with those of American soldiers. The Museum continued collecting Native American remains until the late nineteenth century when the role was returned to the Smithsonian Institution, where it remains today.

The star rating was insisted on by Amazon's computer - this note only pertains to Dr. Thomas' pages on the Army Medical Museum.

Michael Rhode, Archivist
National Museum of Health & Medicine

This book is one of the better discussions of the issue, and far more factual than the arrant nonsense published by James Chatters. If anything, David Hurst Thomas errs only in trying to be fairer to certain of the current generation of scientists than they deserve. The truth is that there was never really any doubt over the direct genetic relationship between PaleoIndians like Kennewick Man & their modern Native American descendants, and that this has always been a purely political fight over control of ancient human remains... seen by the descendants as ?ancestors? to be protected, but viewed by scientists as ?research material? to fuel their careers with. (Several of the plaintiff scientists have even admitted that they had been searching for a legal ?test case? for years, hoping to gut NAGPRA. And their behavior was calculated to raise the hackles of local tribes & prevent any NAGPRA sanctioned study. They didn?t even TRY asking tribal permission under NAGPRA guidelines)

PaleoIndians & Native Americans share the same mtDNA haplogroups (which are found at low levels in Asia & the Pacific, & virtually nonexistant elsewhere). Craniometrically, some PaleoIndians (Buhl Woman, Wizard?s Beach Man, etc) show close affinities to modern Native Americans, the others don?t closely match anybody but show general affinities to Native American, Beringian, SE Asian, & Pacific populations. The largest & most comprehensive PaleoIndian craniometric study to date (Powell & Neves? ?Craniofacial Morphology of the First Americans?, from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology) determined that PaleoIndians overall DID match up with modern Native Americans, with the differences falling within the range of known evolutionary processes such as genetic drift. Linguistic & genetic studies of modern Native Americans reveal that their ancestors arrived here LONG before the PaleoIndian era (Linguistics says 30,000+ years, DNA says 20,000-40,000+ years).

Yet strangely, none of this is mentioned by scientists prominent in the Kennewick debacle. Instead, people WITHOUT biology degrees make false pronouncements about DNA, people without physical anthropology degrees (or who have them & should know better) make false & stereotypical pronouncements about craniometrics, and so on. You have the noted C.Loring Brace (a several times past director of the American Eugenics Society) claiming that ?all? Indians craniometrically match Asians such as Chinese (when his ?only? match turns out to involve one group of related tribes commonly thought to be late arrivals, and geographically nearest to Asia to boot... hence most subject to later geneflow). And he has been quoted by reporters as speaking of ?mongoloid invaders who exterminated the caucasoid first arrivals?. Other scientists speak of ?caucasoid? looking PaleoIndians, WITHOUT mentioning that these same traits are found among various modern & historical Native American tribes, and WITHOUT mentioning that rather than being typical only of ?Caucasoids? (they actually show up in ASIA before they are found in Europe), these traits are common among various Asian & Pacific populations... and are even found among some African groups! Much hooraw was made in the papers of mtDNA ?haplogroup X? as a link between ?ancient Americans? & Europeans, but it was rarely noted that the haplogroup is MORE common in the Near East than it is in Europe, and that it is also found in North Africa, Asia Minor, India, and SIBERIA?. and that the European haplogroup lineages form a DIFFERENT sub-clade than do the Native American ones, and have been phylogenetically shown to NOT be ancestral to them. Numerous scientists claimed that modern Indians didn?t possess the same head shapes as did PaleoIndians, stereotyping PaleoIndians as being narrowheaded (dolichocranic) & modern Native Americans as broadheaded (brachycranic), despite the fact that some PaleoIndians (like Marmes Rockshelter) were brachycranic & MANY modern Indians (including the majority of those east of the Mississippi & on the Northern Plains, & many South American Indians) were narrowheaded & that brachycranic Indians were actually in the minority overall! Scientists have quoted Christy Turner's old claim that all Native Americans possessed Sinodont dental patterns, like NE Asians, & did NOT match PaleoIndian dental patterns...when in reality Turner was shown to be mistaken, numerous Indian tribes have been shown to be Sundadont, or intermediate, and PaleoIndians have been shown to possess traits found in BOTH Sinodont & Sundadont populations. This suggests that either PaleoIndians arrived BEFORE Sinodonty evolved (~20,000 BP), or that they were a mix of peoples possessing both dental patterns.

Worse yet, while prominent scientists have shown themselves more than willing to make wild claims regarding PaleoIndians & Native Americans, even BEFORE study is conducted... they have not been as willing to offer correction when actual studies subsequently prove them wrong. Whether speaking of Kennewick, Penon Woman, or Lagoa Santa, the scientific craniometric truth behind their appearance has generally received less coverage than the ?pre-game speculation?.

Digressing a bit, I should note that I feel it helps if reviewers first had a good grasp of the facts. A prime example is the anonymous reviewer from Bogart, Georgia, who makes makes several glaring errors. ?Bogart? speaks of ?Caucasoid skeletal remains?, when PaleoIndians have been clearly shown to NOT be Caucasoid... merely to possess certain traits called ?proto-Caucasoid? by some researchers, and more accurately (given where they first evolved) called ?proto-MONGOLOID? by others. (A point to mention is that these self same traits are found in Australian Aborigines... hardly an indication of any ?Caucasoid? connection).

?Bogart? also claims that ?ancient artifacts? (& possibly the purportedly Caucasoid remains, his phrasing is a bit vague) ?predate the fabled land-bridge to Siberia in the last ice age?... yet the midpoint of the landbridge's existance (the last Glacial Maximum) predates the oldest proven archaeological site in the Americas (Monte Verde) by at least 7,000 years, it's first appearance is even earlier. For that matter, no landbridge was needed. The Bering strait can be WALKED over during most winters, when the ice freezes, and there is also evidence that humans in the Pacific had boats capable of crossing that distance well over 60,000 years ago.

?Bogart? also fatuously speaks of these purported ?remains & and ancient artifacts? as having more in common with ancient sites in Europe ?than with anything Asian or typically Native American?. The problem with this is that the oldest remains in the Americas match up with Pacific & East Asian peoples, NOT with Europeans (see various craniometric studies, particularly those of Joseph Powell or Walter Neves). (For that matter, the oldest ?anatomically modern?, or ?non-neanderthal?, human remains in Europe are actually a closer match to MODERN Native Americans than they are to modern Europeans, according to C. Loring Brace?s own data! It is likely relevant that genetic studies indicate major population replacements in Europe since the time of these first settlers).

As for artifacts, Clovis era artifacts have been tied to ?ancient European? peoples (i.e., ?Solutreans?) only by those with lots of theory but little fact to support it, or by those naively parroting them. The purported Solutrean tie has been discounted as a superficial similarity, differing on more points that it matches, by the ACTUAL Solutrean experts such as Lawrence Guy Straus. And pre-Clovis lithic artifacts in the Americas (Monte Verde, Cactus Hill, Topper, Meadowscroft, etc) are typically unifacial rather than Solutrean or Clovis type bifacials, and have been stated by the excavators of those sites to have NO similarity to Solutrean lithic industries.

?Bogart? says that Native Americans ?may not be the earliest immigrants to the Americas?, exposing ignorance... or bias... or wishful thinking... in one fell swoop. Currently, ALL evidence (DNA, linguistic, craniometric, lithic, etc) points to modern Native Americans as being descended from the earliest known inhabitants of the Americas. In those cases where claims of biological discontinuity have been espoused, closer scrutiny finds only inaccurate or out of context data behind such claims.

So for example, ?Bogart? erroneously states that ?DNA is found among some groups of "Native Americans" that matches a strand found only in Europe?. He is speaking of mitochondrial haplogroup X, which back at the time of the initial Kennewick furor was widely reported in the popular press (having been planted there by anthropologists & archaeologists WITHOUT biology degrees) as being a ?European? haplogroup totally absent from Asia. Nothing could be further from the truth (read actual scientific journal articles like Smith et al?s ?Distribution of mtDNA haplogroup X among Native North Americans? in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, or Reidla et al?s ?Origin and Difusion of mtDNA haplogroup X? in the American Journal of Human Genetics). Even at the time of the initial reports in the press it was known that haplogroup X was MORE COMMON & more diverse in the Near East, & that Native Americans had the same overall frequency of it as did Europeans (negating any thought of their having obtained it from ?partial ancient European? ancestry), and that the Native American & European lineages came from DIFFERENT sub-clades of haplogroup X. And rather than ?absent? in Asia, it had for the most part NOT YET BEEN LOOKED FOR in that region. One of the first direct attempts to search for it turned it up among a Siberian population (again, at the same level as in Europe & North America). Subsequent studies found it to be even further ranging (India, Africa, etc). For anyone to call it a ?European? haplogroup today is as misleading as it would be to call black hair merely a ?European? trait, despite it?s being MORE common in other parts of the world that predate the settlement of Europe.

I highly recommend this book. But I also recommend visiting your local university library, or searching the internet, for copies of scientific journal articles dealing with DNA (most of this is NOT available from other sources) & linguistics & archaeology & Ice Age conditions. By neccessity, ANY single book simplifies or glosses over certain things, without ample background, the reader can be inadvertantly misled. Other useful books would be Thomas Dillehay?s ?The Settlement of the Americas.? Sadly, more detailed books like those edited by Robson Bonnichsen of the Center for the Study of the First Americans are chronically out of print, poorly described (?conference proceedings? that DON?T say when the conference took place, or books that don?t give publication dates allowing you to determine whether they might be outdated or not, etc) or are unreasonably delayed in publication. But if you can find a copy, ?Ice Age Peoples of North America? is a good read. If it ever comes out (delayed twice already), ?PaleoAmerican Origins? promises to contain invaluable information.

This book is one of the better discussions of the issue, and far more factual than the arrant nonsense published by James Chatters. If anything, David Hurst Thomas errs only in trying to be fairer to certain of the current generation of scientists than they deserve. The truth is that there was never really any doubt over the direct genetic relationship between PaleoIndians like Kennewick Man & their modern Native American descendants, and that this has always been a purely political fight over control of ancient human remains... seen by the descendants as ?ancestors? to be protected, but viewed by scientists as ?research material? to fuel their careers with. (Several of the plaintiff scientists have even admitted that they had been searching for a legal ?test case? for years, hoping to gut NAGPRA. And their behavior was calculated to raise the hackles of local tribes & prevent any NAGPRA sanctioned study. They didn?t even TRY asking tribal permission under NAGPRA guidelines)

PaleoIndians & Native Americans share the same mtDNA haplogroups (which are found at low levels in Asia & the Pacific, & virtually nonexistant elsewhere). Craniometrically, some PaleoIndians (Buhl Woman, Wizard?s Beach Man, etc) show close affinities to modern Native Americans, the others don?t closely match anybody but show general affinities to Native American, Beringian, SE Asian, & Pacific populations. The largest & most comprehensive PaleoIndian craniometric study to date (Powell & Neves? ?Craniofacial Morphology of the First Americans?, from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology) determined that PaleoIndians overall DID match up with modern Native Americans, with the differences falling within the range of known evolutionary processes such as genetic drift. Linguistic & genetic studies of modern Native Americans reveal that their ancestors arrived here LONG before the PaleoIndian era (Linguistics says 30,000+ years, DNA says 20,000-40,000+ years).

Yet strangely, none of this is mentioned by scientists prominent in the Kennewick debacle. Instead, people WITHOUT biology degrees make false pronouncements about DNA, people without physical anthropology degrees (or who have them & should know better) make false & stereotypical pronouncements about craniometrics, and so on. You have the noted C.Loring Brace (a several times past director of the American Eugenics Society) claiming that ?all? Indians craniometrically match Asians such as Chinese (when his ?only? match turns out to involve one group of related tribes commonly thought to be late arrivals, and geographically nearest to Asia to boot... hence most subject to later geneflow). And he has been quoted by reporters as speaking of ?mongoloid invaders who exterminated the caucasoid first arrivals?. Other scientists speak of ?caucasoid? looking PaleoIndians, WITHOUT mentioning that these same traits are found among various modern & historical Native American tribes, and WITHOUT mentioning that rather than being typical only of ?Caucasoids? (they actually show up in ASIA before they are found in Europe), these traits are common among various Asian & Pacific populations... and are even found among some African groups! Much hooraw was made in the papers of mtDNA ?haplogroup X? as a link between ?ancient Americans? & Europeans, but it was rarely noted that the haplogroup is MORE common in the Near East than it is in Europe, and that it is also found in North Africa, Asia Minor, India, and SIBERIA?. and that the European haplogroup lineages form a DIFFERENT sub-clade than do the Native American ones, and have been phylogenetically shown to NOT be ancestral to them. Numerous scientists claimed that modern Indians didn?t possess the same head shapes as did PaleoIndians, stereotyping PaleoIndians as being narrowheaded (dolichocranic) & modern Native Americans as broadheaded (brachycranic), despite the fact that some PaleoIndians (like Marmes Rockshelter) were brachycranic & MANY modern Indians (including the majority of those east of the Mississippi & on the Northern Plains, & many South American Indians) were narrowheaded & that brachycranic Indians were actually in the minority overall! Scientists have quoted Christy Turner's old claim that all Native Americans possessed Sinodont dental patterns, like NE Asians, & did NOT match PaleoIndian dental patterns...when in reality Turner was shown to be mistaken, numerous Indian tribes have been shown to be Sundadont, or intermediate, and PaleoIndians have been shown to possess traits found in BOTH Sinodont & Sundadont populations. This suggests that either PaleoIndians arrived BEFORE Sinodonty evolved (~20,000 BP), or that they were a mix of peoples possessing both dental patterns.

Worse yet, while prominent scientists have shown themselves more than willing to make wild claims regarding PaleoIndians & Native Americans, even BEFORE study is conducted... they have not been as willing to offer correction when actual studies subsequently prove them wrong. Whether speaking of Kennewick, Penon Woman, or Lagoa Santa, the scientific craniometric truth behind their appearance has generally received less coverage than the ?pre-game speculation?.

Digressing a bit, I should note that I feel it helps if reviewers first had a good grasp of the facts. A prime example is the anonymous reviewer from Bogart, Georgia, who makes makes several glaring errors. ?Bogart? speaks of ?Caucasoid skeletal remains?, when PaleoIndians have been clearly shown to NOT be Caucasoid... merely to possess certain traits called ?proto-Caucasoid? by some researchers, and more accurately (given where they first evolved) called ?proto-MONGOLOID? by others. (A point to mention is that these self same traits are found in Australian Aborigines... hardly an indication of any ?Caucasoid? connection).

?Bogart? also claims that ?ancient artifacts? (& possibly the purportedly Caucasoid remains, his phrasing is a bit vague) ?predate the fabled land-bridge to Siberia in the last ice age?... yet the midpoint of the landbridge's existance (the last Glacial Maximum) predates the oldest proven archaeological site in the Americas (Monte Verde) by at least 7,000 years, it's first appearance is even earlier. For that matter, no landbridge was needed. The Bering strait can be WALKED over during most winters, when the ice freezes, and there is also evidence that humans in the Pacific had boats capable of crossing that distance well over 60,000 years ago.

?Bogart? also fatuously speaks of these purported ?remains & and ancient artifacts? as having more in common with ancient sites in Europe ?than with anything Asian or typically Native American?. The problem with this is that the oldest remains in the Americas match up with Pacific & East Asian peoples, NOT with Europeans (see various craniometric studies, particularly those of Joseph Powell or Walter Neves). (For that matter, the oldest ?anatomically modern?, or ?non-neanderthal?, human remains in Europe are actually a closer match to MODERN Native Americans than they are to modern Europeans, according to C. Loring Brace?s own data! It is likely relevant that genetic studies indicate major population replacements in Europe since the time of these first settlers).

As for artifacts, Clovis era artifacts have been tied to ?ancient European? peoples (i.e., ?Solutreans?) only by those with lots of theory but little fact to support it, or by those naively parroting them. The purported Solutrean tie has been discounted as a superficial similarity, differing on more points that it matches, by the ACTUAL Solutrean experts such as Lawrence Guy Straus. And pre-Clovis lithic artifacts in the Americas (Monte Verde, Cactus Hill, Topper, Meadowscroft, etc) are typically unifacial rather than Solutrean or Clovis type bifacials, and have been stated by the excavators of those sites to have NO similarity to Solutrean lithic industries.

?Bogart? says that Native Americans ?may not be the earliest immigrants to the Americas?, exposing ignorance... or bias... or wishful thinking... in one fell swoop. Currently, ALL evidence (DNA, linguistic, craniometric, lithic, etc) points to modern Native Americans as being descended from the earliest known inhabitants of the Americas. In those cases where claims of biological discontinuity have been espoused, closer scrutiny finds only inaccurate or out of context data behind such claims.

So for example, ?Bogart? erroneously states that ?DNA is found among some groups of "Native Americans" that matches a strand found only in Europe?. He is speaking of mitochondrial haplogroup X, which back at the time of the initial Kennewick furor was widely reported in the popular press (having been planted there by anthropologists & archaeologists WITHOUT biology degrees) as being a ?European? haplogroup totally absent from Asia. Nothing could be further from the truth (read actual scientific journal articles like Smith et al?s ?Distribution of mtDNA haplogroup X among Native North Americans? in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, or Reidla et al?s ?Origin and Difusion of mtDNA haplogroup X? in the American Journal of Human Genetics). Even at the time of the initial reports in the press it was known that haplogroup X was MORE COMMON & more diverse in the Near East, & that Native Americans had the same overall frequency of it as did Europeans (negating any thought of their having obtained it from ?partial ancient European? ancestry), and that the Native American & European lineages came from DIFFERENT sub-clades of haplogroup X. And rather than ?absent? in Asia, it had for the most part NOT YET BEEN LOOKED FOR in that region. One of the first direct attempts to search for it turned it up among a Siberian population (again, at the same level as in Europe & North America). Subsequent studies found it to be even further ranging (India, Africa, etc). For anyone to call it a ?European? haplogroup today is as misleading as it would be to call black hair merely a ?European? trait, despite it?s being MORE common in other parts of the world that predate the settlement of Europe.

I highly recommend this book. But I also recommend visiting your local university library, or searching the internet, for copies of scientific journal articles dealing with DNA (most of this is NOT available from other sources) & linguistics & archaeology & Ice Age conditions. By neccessity, ANY single book simplifies or glosses over certain things, without ample background, the reader can be inadvertantly misled. Other useful books would be Thomas Dillehay?s ?The Settlement of the Americas.? Sadly, more detailed books like those edited by Robson Bonnichsen of the Center for the Study of the First Americans are chronically out of print, poorly described (?conference proceedings? that DON?T say when the conference took place, or books that don?t give publication dates allowing you to determine whether they might be outdated or not, etc) or are unreasonably delayed in publication. But if you can find a copy, ?Ice Age Peoples of North America? is a good read. If it ever comes out (delayed twice already), ?PaleoAmerican Origins? promises to contain invaluable information.

This book is one of the better discussions of the issue, and far more factual than the arrant nonsense published by James Chatters. If anything, David Hurst Thomas errs only in trying to be fairer to certain of the current generation of scientists than they deserve. The truth is that there was never really any doubt over the direct genetic relationship between PaleoIndians like Kennewick Man & their modern Native American descendants, and that this has always been a purely political fight over control of ancient human remains... seen by the descendants as ?ancestors? to be protected, but viewed by scientists as ?research material? to fuel their careers with. (Several of the plaintiff scientists have even admitted that they had been searching for a legal ?test case? for years, hoping to gut NAGPRA. And their behavior was calculated to raise the hackles of local tribes & prevent any NAGPRA sanctioned study. They didn?t even TRY asking tribal permission under NAGPRA guidelines)

PaleoIndians & Native Americans share the same mtDNA haplogroups (which are found at low levels in Asia & the Pacific, & virtually nonexistant elsewhere). Craniometrically, some PaleoIndians (Buhl Woman, Wizard?s Beach Man, etc) show close affinities to modern Native Americans, the others don?t closely match anybody but show general affinities to Native American, Beringian, SE Asian, & Pacific populations. The largest & most comprehensive PaleoIndian craniometric study to date (Powell & Neves? ?Craniofacial Morphology of the First Americans?, from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology) determined that PaleoIndians overall DID match up with modern Native Americans, with the differences falling within the range of known evolutionary processes such as genetic drift. Linguistic & genetic studies of modern Native Americans reveal that their ancestors arrived here LONG before the PaleoIndian era (Linguistics says 30,000+ years, DNA says 20,000-40,000+ years).

Yet strangely, none of this is mentioned by scientists prominent in the Kennewick debacle. Instead, people WITHOUT biology degrees make false pronouncements about DNA, people without physical anthropology degrees (or who have them & should know better) make false & stereotypical pronouncements about craniometrics, and so on. You have the noted C.Loring Brace (a several times past director of the American Eugenics Society) claiming that ?all? Indians craniometrically match Asians such as Chinese (when his ?only? match turns out to involve one group of related tribes commonly thought to be late arrivals, and geographically nearest to Asia to boot... hence most subject to later geneflow). And he has been quoted by reporters as speaking of ?mongoloid invaders who exterminated the caucasoid first arrivals?. Other scientists speak of ?caucasoid? looking PaleoIndians, WITHOUT mentioning that these same traits are found among various modern & historical Native American tribes, and WITHOUT mentioning that rather than being typical only of ?Caucasoids? (they actually show up in ASIA before they are found in Europe), these traits are common among various Asian & Pacific populations... and are even found among some African groups! Much hooraw was made in the papers of mtDNA ?haplogroup X? as a link between ?ancient Americans? & Europeans, but it was rarely noted that the haplogroup is MORE common in the Near East than it is in Europe, and that it is also found in North Africa, Asia Minor, India, and SIBERIA?. and that the European haplogroup lineages form a DIFFERENT sub-clade than do the Native American ones, and have been phylogenetically shown to NOT be ancestral to them. Numerous scientists claimed that modern Indians didn?t possess the same head shapes as did PaleoIndians, stereotyping PaleoIndians as being narrowheaded (dolichocranic) & modern Native Americans as broadheaded (brachycranic), despite the fact that some PaleoIndians (like Marmes Rockshelter) were brachycranic & MANY modern Indians (including the majority of those east of the Mississippi & on the Northern Plains, & many South American Indians) were narrowheaded & that brachycranic Indians were actually in the minority overall! Scientists have quoted Christy Turner's old claim that all Native Americans possessed Sinodont dental patterns, like NE Asians, & did NOT match PaleoIndian dental patterns...when in reality Turner was shown to be mistaken, numerous Indian tribes have been shown to be Sundadont, or intermediate, and PaleoIndians have been shown to possess traits found in BOTH Sinodont & Sundadont populations. This suggests that either PaleoIndians arrived BEFORE Sinodonty evolved (~20,000 BP), or that they were a mix of peoples possessing both dental patterns.

Worse yet, while prominent scientists have shown themselves more than willing to make wild claims regarding PaleoIndians & Native Americans, even BEFORE study is conducted... they have not been as willing to offer correction when actual studies subsequently prove them wrong. Whether speaking of Kennewick, Penon Woman, or Lagoa Santa, the scientific craniometric truth behind their appearance has generally received less coverage than the ?pre-game speculation?.

Digressing a bit, I should note that I feel it helps if reviewers first had a good grasp of the facts. A prime example is the anonymous reviewer from Bogart, Georgia, who makes makes several glaring errors. ?Bogart? speaks of ?Caucasoid skeletal remains?, when PaleoIndians have been clearly shown to NOT be Caucasoid... merely to possess certain traits called ?proto-Caucasoid? by some researchers, and more accurately (given where they first evolved) called ?proto-MONGOLOID? by others. (A point to mention is that these self same traits are found in Australian Aborigines... hardly an indication of any ?Caucasoid? connection).

?Bogart? also claims that ?ancient artifacts? (& possibly the purportedly Caucasoid remains, his phrasing is a bit vague) ?predate the fabled land-bridge to Siberia in the last ice age?... yet the midpoint of the landbridge's existance (the last Glacial Maximum) predates the oldest proven archaeological site in the Americas (Monte Verde) by at least 7,000 years, it's first appearance is even earlier. For that matter, no landbridge was needed. The Bering strait can be WALKED over during most winters, when the ice freezes, and there is also evidence that humans in the Pacific had boats capable of crossing that distance well over 60,000 years ago.

?Bogart? also fatuously speaks of these purported ?remains & and ancient artifacts? as having more in common with ancient sites in Europe ?than with anything Asian or typically Native American?. The problem with this is that the oldest remains in the Americas match up with Pacific & East Asian peoples, NOT with Europeans (see various craniometric studies, particularly those of Joseph Powell or Walter Neves). (For that matter, the oldest ?anatomically modern?, or ?non-neanderthal?, human remains in Europe are actually a closer match to MODERN Native Americans than they are to modern Europeans, according to C. Loring Brace?s own data! It is likely relevant that genetic studies indicate major population replacements in Europe since the time of these first settlers).

As for artifacts, Clovis era artifacts have been tied to ?ancient European? peoples (i.e., ?Solutreans?) only by those with lots of theory but little fact to support it, or by those naively parroting them. The purported Solutrean tie has been discounted as a superficial similarity, differing on more points that it matches, by the ACTUAL Solutrean experts such as Lawrence Guy Straus. And pre-Clovis lithic artifacts in the Americas (Monte Verde, Cactus Hill, Topper, Meadowscroft, etc) are typically unifacial rather than Solutrean or Clovis type bifacials, and have been stated by the excavators of those sites to have NO similarity to Solutrean lithic industries.

?Bogart? says that Native Americans ?may not be the earliest immigrants to the Americas?, exposing ignorance... or bias... or wishful thinking... in one fell swoop. Currently, ALL evidence (DNA, linguistic, craniometric, lithic, etc) points to modern Native Americans as being descended from the earliest known inhabitants of the Americas. In those cases where claims of biological discontinuity have been espoused, closer scrutiny finds only inaccurate or out of context data behind such claims.

So for example, ?Bogart? erroneously states that ?DNA is found among some groups of "Native Americans" that matches a strand found only in Europe?. He is speaking of mitochondrial haplogroup X, which back at the time of the initial Kennewick furor was widely reported in the popular press (having been planted there by anthropologists & archaeologists WITHOUT biology degrees) as being a ?European? haplogroup totally absent from Asia. Nothing could be further from the truth (read actual scientific journal articles like Smith et al?s ?Distribution of mtDNA haplogroup X among Native North Americans? in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, or Reidla et al?s ?Origin and Difusion of mtDNA haplogroup X? in the American Journal of Human Genetics). Even at the time of the initial reports in the press it was known that haplogroup X was MORE COMMON & more diverse in the Near East, & that Native Americans had the same overall frequency of it as did Europeans (negating any thought of their having obtained it from ?partial ancient European? ancestry), and that the Native American & European lineages came from DIFFERENT sub-clades of haplogroup X. And rather than ?absent? in Asia, it had for the most part NOT YET BEEN LOOKED FOR in that region. One of the first direct attempts to search for it turned it up among a Siberian population (again, at the same level as in Europe & North America). Subsequent studies found it to be even further ranging (India, Africa, etc). For anyone to call it a ?European? haplogroup today is as misleading as it would be to call black hair merely a ?European? trait, despite it?s being MORE common in other parts of the world that predate the settlement of Europe.

I highly recommend this book. But I also recommend visiting your local university library, or searching the internet, for copies of scientific journal articles dealing with DNA (most of this is NOT available from other sources) & linguistics & archaeology & Ice Age conditions. By neccessity, ANY single book simplifies or glosses over certain things, without ample background, the reader can be inadvertantly misled. Other useful books would be Thomas Dillehay?s ?The Settlement of the Americas.? Sadly, more detailed books like those edited by Robson Bonnichsen of the Center for the Study of the First Americans are chronically out of print, poorly described (?conference proceedings? that DON?T say when the conference took place, or books that don?t give publication dates allowing you to determine whether they might be outdated or not, etc) or are unreasonably delayed in publication. But if you can find a copy, ?Ice Age Peoples of North America? is a good read. If it ever comes out (delayed twice already), ?PaleoAmerican Origins? promises to contain invaluable information.

As an author myself, one of the kindest remarks about my work was paid by a detractor. She had written that "Davis' words may be factual, but they are biting, irreverent and at a total disregard for social ideals.." "Skull Wars" puts me in mind of this same quote, only I am hardly a detractor. Thomas's style IS biting. His "no holds bared, this is the plain truth" writing may well ruffle some eurocentric feathers. And it may well upset more than a few Arianists. So what? His work is direct, lucid, and to the point. His willingness, and in some areas blatant will for the disregard for political correctness must be applauded. This is a great bit of writing. Period. In an age of "warm and fuzzy, let's all get along at any cost", too many Americans have forgotten (or are ignorant of) the bloody history of our forefathers. I have often remarked that the Native people's biggest mistake was not burning those three ships right into the sea.

This is an excellnt example of an interesting page turner brimming with facts in favor of social-political agendas. A must for all historians.

I wouldn't even assume Chatters was simply foolish; I'd assume he did a racist snow job worthy of Broca himself. He basically compared East Asian features to Kennewick man, said "no", and then decided it was Caucasian, ignoring some very important differences between American Indians and East Asians.

Let's first look at the stereotypes: Cradleboard compression, arthritis, and presence of all teeth. Wouldn't it be BLINDINGLY obvious that arthritis and dental problems weren't really a problem traditionally, just like how sickle-cell is a side effect for defense against malaria? And cradleboard compression similarly is a cultural, and therefore Lamarckian, trait.

On to the cephalic, or cranial index. First developed as a way to "explain away" such annoyingly inconvenient groups as Buryats and Mongols, who had larger - but broader - heads than Caucasians. (And they still couldn't explain groups like the Xhosa, Iroquois, and Eskimos.) Not that it matters; it varies widely in Europe, brachycrania occuring more in Finland, Lappland, and much of southern Europe, and a mixture of meso- and dolichocrania occurring more in the rest of Europe. East Asian groups are more likely brachycranic. In the Americas, you get a much different picture: Iroquois and Eskimos, as I mentioned. North America's generally dolicho- or mesocranic, while Central America's generally brachycranic, and South America's generally dolichocranic. (Of course, that's all assuming it's heritable.) I'd even say that plains Indians might be more dolichocranic; remember, most of the remains from that time spent their infancy on the cradleboard.

Chatters also describes the gnathic index, which is quite funny, since most forensic reconstruction books tell you a prognathous face is rarely Caucasian. Oh, and the bigots of the 19th century track prognathism as a Bad Thing, which means it can't be very common in Caucasians.

He then describes a number of other "And that's a problem because..." traits that make me wonder if he's ever seen an Indian (a long, broad nose, for example), as well as traits which are a compilation of several traits (Turner's patterns, where Turner prematurely marked Indians as sinodont without any studies).

But Chatters is a soft-liner: Loring Brace effectively ruled Indians descendants of Neanderthals as a result.

On the other hand, Skull Wars showed that one in a thousand anthropologists who have heard of Kennewick man isn't a Thor Heyerdahl wannabe.

Though I wish he'd tell that the Bering Strait theory was unanimously agreed to even before Vitus Bering was born, based on a tortured interpretation of Aztec history. It was NEVER tested.

I wouldn't even assume Chatters was simply foolish; I'd assume he did a racist snow job worthy of Broca himself. He basically compared East Asian features to Kennewick man, said "no", and then decided it was Caucasian, ignoring some very important differences between American Indians and East Asians.

Let's first look at the stereotypes: Cradleboard compression, arthritis, and presence of all teeth. Wouldn't it be BLINDINGLY obvious that arthritis and dental problems weren't really a problem traditionally, just like how sickle-cell is a side effect for defense against malaria? And cradleboard compression similarly is a cultural, and therefore Lamarckian, trait.

On to the cephalic, or cranial index. First developed as a way to "explain away" such annoyingly inconvenient groups as Buryats and Mongols, who had larger - but broader - heads than Caucasians. (And they still couldn't explain groups like the Xhosa, Iroquois, and Eskimos.) Not that it matters; it varies widely in Europe, brachycrania occuring more in Finland, Lappland, and much of southern Europe, and a mixture of meso- and dolichocrania occurring more in the rest of Europe. East Asian groups are more likely brachycranic. In the Americas, you get a much different picture: Iroquois and Eskimos, as I mentioned. North America's generally dolicho- or mesocranic, while Central America's generally brachycranic, and South America's generally dolichocranic. (Of course, that's all assuming it's heritable.) I'd even say that plains Indians might be more dolichocranic; remember, most of the remains from that time spent their infancy on the cradleboard.

Chatters also describes the gnathic index, which is quite funny, since most forensic reconstruction books tell you a prognathous face is rarely Caucasian. Oh, and the bigots of the 19th century track prognathism as a Bad Thing, which means it can't be very common in Caucasians.

He then describes a number of other "And that's a problem because..." traits that make me wonder if he's ever seen an Indian (a long, broad nose, for example), as well as traits which are a compilation of several traits (Turner's patterns, where Turner prematurely marked Indians as sinodont without any studies).

But Chatters is a soft-liner: Loring Brace effectively ruled Indians descendants of Neanderthals as a result.

On the other hand, Skull Wars showed that one in a thousand anthropologists who have heard of Kennewick man isn't a Thor Heyerdahl wannabe.

Though I wish he'd tell that the Bering Strait theory was unanimously agreed to even before Vitus Bering was born, based on a tortured interpretation of Aztec history. It was NEVER tested.

Skull Wars is a fascinating survey of the relationship between anthropologists and Native Americans. In the process of telling this story, Thomas discusses many of the interesting episodes along the way such as the discovery of Kennewick Man, the Greenland Eskimos in New York, and the emergence of Ishi. Central to the book is the struggle over "scientific racism" which is really still continuing today. In the past, skull size was often seen as an indicator of intelligence. Thomas devotes a great deal of space to the ideas of Franz Boas who denied a biological basis for race by showing the irrelevance of skull size, paving the way for the idea of race as a social construction. Thomas also discusses how much Native Americans have generally hated the desecration of their ancestor's bodies by grave-robbing anthropologists who were looking for specimens, noting that people of European descent do not expect their dead to be treated in this way. The ideas of Vine Deloria seem to have had a great impact on Thomas's thinking and he is cited frequently in the book mainly in the context of putting Native peoples back in charge of their remains. Congress has made it official by passing the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act. Another issue that Thomas deals with and ties in to the issues already cited is the origin of people indigenous to the Americas. Thomas seems to come down on the side of saying that it is an open question and that the Bering Strait theory is by no means a closed case. All in all, a very interesting and provocative book.

Indiana Jones famously said that archaeology is the search for fact, not truth. Caucasoid skeletal remains, and ancient artifacts (predating the fabled land-bridge to Siberia in the last ice age) that have more in common with findings at sites of ancient people found in Europe than anything Asian or typically "Native American", may force archaeologists to totally reconstruct the settlement prehistory of the western hemisphere. First, a few terms. "Caucasiod" does not mean "white", since we can have no notion of the skin pigmentation of someone who lived 12,000 years ago. And when ancient artifacts appear that are similar to ancient artifacts in Europe, we do not mean "Europe" as we know the term, but only the physical geographical region where present-day Europe is. And the reason I put "Native American" in quotes is because, by anyone's model, they are not indigenous to the western hemisphere but only, by current models, the earliest immigrants to the Americas.

But they may not be the earliest immigrants to the Americas. Therein lies the political dilemma and potentially explosive controversy discussed in _Skull Wars_. Though the book is engaging and interesting, it focuses too much on trying to be even-handed on both sides. Of course everyone today has much sympathy for the plight of "Native Americans". Occasionally there can be some justice to it (Cortez surely was no worse to the Aztecs than the Aztecs to the Toltecs) but overall they have received pretty shoddy treatment. Darwinism is much to blame for this, as it fit in very nicely with nineteenth century preconceptions of progress and racism; charts were made putting human beings on a chart of evolution (naturally, with Europeans on top).

But sympathy with that nonsense, however deep, must not be able to alter the scientist's search for fact. If it is a fact that people who lived where Europe now is migrated to the Americas before or simultaneously with Asian people who became the "Native Americans", it should be known; if it is not a fact, that shoulc be known. The only way to do it is to study the bones. Yet "Native American" groups claim that all ancient human remains found in the Americas are their ancestors, and given a respectful burial like "Native Americans" and hidden from the prying eyes of scientists. This may be somewhat true. DNA is found among some groups of "Native Americans" that matches a strand found only in Europe. So some "Native American" tribes may have been founded by early European migrants, or perhaps the Asian and European migrants intermarried in many cases.

True, if it is a fact Europeans arrived here first, or simultaneously, with Asians, it may be exploited. Since there were no obvious European descendants here by 1492, some may make a case that the "Native Americans" slaughtered the actual first inhabitants. This is an ugly side issue, not based on any discernable fact, and should not interfere with the establishment of American anthropological chronology. Certainly both sides in the fight over Kennewick Man and his ilk have a claim to right -- and to wrong. But the only way to keep the incident from looking like a political cover-up is to study Kennewick Man and his peers, to discover fact, no matter what particular group does not like it. Indiana Jones would want to study the bones for facts, but would not presume to interpret what they said about Truth.

"Skull Wars", which tells this story pretty well, was nevertheless premature since the court case about who should have custody of Kennewick Man has not been decided, so there's no proper resolution. We await the revised edition.

Thomas has added clarity to an often clouded and contraversial area. He points out the divde between traditional archaeology and the treatment of indiginous people, and offers the archaeologist an ethical parthway for his or her research. What more can I say but absolutely brilliant.

This book provides a good contextual survey and discussion of anthropology and archaeology's dark legacy, much of which until recently sat undisturbed on the shelves of modern museums. For an overview of NAGPRA and historical background leading to the political situation surrounding Kennewick, this is a worthwhile read.

If you want to read specifically about the Kennewick Man and not about the general socio political context leading to this point, you will need to look elsewhere.

This book is much needed. He posed questions that many people (both scientists and Native people) can't answer. The underlying question, being "What is an Indian?" AND "Who has the right to determine that?" He thoughtfully took the current "hot topic" of the Kennewick Man and showed how archaeologists haven't changed their philosophy from the past and points out that archaeology does need to change. Although, I feel some people might get caught up in the Kennewick issue TOO much this clouds many of the issues he brings up.

By using the Kennewick Man to discuss these issues he demonstrates how the "Native American Image" continues to hurt the Native people of today. Cultures do change especially over 9,000 yrs. and there will be little or no "scientific" evidence to show that the Kennewick Man is an ancestor to the Native people. But oral tradition will, but Native American "Image" doesn't allow for oral tradition to be considered "truth."

Overall, Thomas poses a lot of questions for the archaeological society to think about as well as mainstream society. It is well written and easy to understand for non-archaeological people.

The question of whether the 9,400 year-old skeleton of Kennewick Man belongs to Native Americans indigenous to the Northwest, or to the possibly greater interests of science has become one of the most controversial and perplexing issues of our day. In this dispute Thomas has taken the high ground in presenting his fellow archeologists' point of view, but also in admirably presenting a long history of evils archeology has done unto Native Americans. In support of the NA position Thomas chronicles how archeologists, operating under a "scientific racism", lied to the Indians, cheated them, and dug up tons of bones, often of very recent ancestors, and shipped them to museums in the East and in Europe. In this light Native American rage at the idea of disturbing even 9,400 year-old bones of a possible ancestor is understandable. Further, the Umatilla tribe's claim that "our oral history goes back 10,000 years" gives credence to their claim to the Kennewick bones and is substantiated by Thomas's telling of local Indian legends regarding Crater Lake (once Mount Mazama). These legends clearly relate events that occurred 7,600 years ago. Thomas presents a strong case for the NA position, and concludes that the anwer to this and other disputes between archeologists and Native Americans rests on "a relationship based on mutual respect and consensus." The courts have now ruled in favor of the NA desire to forever inter Kennewick Man. However, Thomas has presented ample evidence that the pursuits of science should persevere. Amerindians, migrating from Beringia 11,000 years ago, did occupy much of North America for the first time, but there is growing evidence that they did not occupy all of the Americas alone or even for the first time. Tom Dillehay's exhaustive work at Monte Verde, THE SETTLEMENT OF THE AMERICAS, documents a people who thrived in southern S. America before Beringia migration was possible. Walter Neves' discovery of the earliest known American, E. Brazil's 11,500 year old "Luzia", became all the more profound when Neves' tests, and independent morphologists' confirmations, found that Luzia's teeth and skull exhibited the characteristics of South Pacific Islanders. Discoverer James Chatters described Kennewick Man as having the morphology of a European, but he could as easily have been a Polynesian. We need to know. NA origin myths are very old but so are Central and South American myths which describe their founding as from across the sea. And the great spheres of Costa Rica, described in ATLANTIS IN AMERICA:Navigators of the Ancient World, show that an ancient seafaring culture existed in Central America many thousands of years ago.