This suggestion had implications that went well beyond academic archaeology.

If it were true, it would complicate — or in some arguments, eliminate — the moral and legal basis for Native American claims to the land they occupy and the resources they depend on.

The suggestion was scientifically weak.

The evidence for it was largely morphological — skull shape data that could be interpreted in multiple ways — and it ran against the grain of most geneticists’ expectations.

But it was scientifically alive enough to sustain a decade of legal proceedings and to generate substantial media coverage.