Re: What Are the Race Deniers Denying?

(frank@clark.net)
17 Nov 1996 16:15:50 GMT

I moved this over from a thread called "Whites...the NEW native
Americans."

Allan Matthews (amatthews@cybercom.net) wrote:
: In article <Pine.HPP.3.95.961110011950.6880A-100000@steroid.ecst.csuchico.edu>, Maverick <bretroth@ecst.csuchico.edu> wrote:
: >On Sun, 3 Nov 1996 flashm19@mail.idt.net wrote:
: >>
: >> I believe it is time for the whites in america to take thier rightful place
: > as
: >> native americans.
: >
: >funny you should say that. In Nevada, they recently dug up a 10,000+yr
: >old body of a native American and it turned out to be European genetically
: >rather than the Asian-Indian...
: >
: >The scientists said that this body predated the Indian migration here.
: >
: >looks like I'll have to start marking that native American section.
: >
:
: Gee, you'd think that something like this would be big news. Just where did
: you find this little piece of information? Not that I think you're making
: this up or anything...

It was big news, as least in the scientific community. What happened is
that an archeologist dug up a skull in North America that looked quite
Caucasoid to him and dated it very early, but not earlier than the first
Indian migrations. It was in the _New Yrok Times_.

However, Federal law appears to let Indians keep their ancestor's remains
and rebury them if they wish. So the tribe in question (which had only
lived in the region for 500 years) claimed that this skeleton was one of
"their" ancestors. Upshot: whatever Federal agency is responsible for
interpreting the law ordered that the tribe could rebury the skull and did
not have to allow any further scientific testing to corroborate the
skull's race and to more precisely date it. As I recall the margin of
error of the preliminary dating was a factor of two.

A couple of weeks later the Tuesday "Science News" section of the NYT had
a major article on the Indian Fundamentalists, which is exactly the word
used. I looked in my pile of clippings for the piece, since I know I saved
it, but it wasn't in that particular pile.

Oddly enough, at least in terms of what gets said on this thread, there
was no one saying that races don't exist, that race cannot be inferred
from a skull, and other such things. Anyhow, it is an exciting discovery,
and I hope the archeologist snipped off some hair or whatever for DNA
testing.

Frank Forman
frank@clark.net
"It is a far, far better thing to be firmly
anchored in nonsense than to put out on the
troubled seas of thought" - John Kenneth Galbraith

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