The same conflict between a Western scientific tradition that views the past as a shared human heritage open to investigation, and Indigenous traditions that view the dead as relatives who deserve privacy, respect, and return to the earth.

Now it was playing out in a federal courtroom.

And the whole country was watching.

SECTION 7: THE MYSTERY SURROUNDING HIS IDENTITY — AND THE THEORIES THAT EXPLODED

While the legal battle was being organized, something else was happening that would complicate everything: the theories.

In the court of public opinion — and in certain corners of the scientific world — the question of who Kennewick Man was had taken on a life of its own.

The preliminary morphological observations about his skull had opened a door, and through that door rushed a flood of speculation, some of it scientifically plausible, much of it wildly irresponsible, and some of it frankly motivated by agendas that had little to do with understanding the ancient past.

The most extreme versions of the story claimed that Kennewick Man was European.

That ancient Europeans had arrived in North America thousands of years before Columbus.

That this proved Native Americans were not, in fact, the original inhabitants of the continent.