In 1996, two college students waded into Washington State’s Columbia River, keen to watch the day’s hydroplane races. Roughly 10 feet from shore, however, one of the students stumbled upon something even more attention-grabbing: a human skull, which radiocarbon dating would soon reveal was roughly 8,500 years old, one of the oldest ever found in the Americas. Over several trips, archaeologists pieced together a nearly complete skeleton consisting of more than 300 bones, referred to thereafter as the Ancient One or Kennewick Man.
The discovery of Kennewick Man was a boon for scientists interested in the peopling of the Americas, but it also kicked off a decades-long saga pitting a group of eight researchers against the US Army Corp of Engineers—who oversaw the land where the skeleton had been found and alerted nearby tribes—and at least four local Indigenous groups. At stake was the final judgement over who could claim ...
