My reaction to the History Channel exclusive “Mystery of the 1st Americans”
I never heard of Jim Chatters, or the skull and a thigh bone that were found in Washington. I am glad I did. I always like documentary films like this intrigue me. I mean that was once a person. Who was it? Where did it come from? Along the Columbian river, two college kids found a skull and a thigh bone. Chatters was brought in to determine how long the bones had been there; police assuming a murder. Turns out this was a male, 45 years of age when he died, however he was much older than a couple of decades. Along with the thigh and skull they found a few other pieces of bone. What was interesting about this ancient skeleton of 9,000 years was that he had undergone a lot of injuries that all proved to be fatal, but had healed one right after the other. First there was the spear base to the skull which had healed; his left elbow had been broken and had an infection but healed; his chest had been crushed (the ribs broke from spine) at one point or another but also healed; and his cheek bone had been broken as well but also healed. The actual cause of death happened after all of his injuries had been healed so it is hard to say what this human died from. What was interesting about Chatters’ discovery was that the skull of the male seemed to be longer than a normal skull. Problems they have been having are over the ownership of the skeleton. Being an anthropologist, Chatters’ believes that the bones should be studied and investigated further so that we may learn more about the human past and how our bodies have changed. However, local Native Americans claim that they have ownership of the bones and that they should hand them over back to them so they can bury their ancestor. Thus the bones were retrieved from Chatters and put under custody. To this day the dispute over who should have the bones is up in court.
Now, I’m all for giving to others what is theirs and I understand that Native American’s hold strong ties to their ancestors. However, Chatters has proven more clearly than they have, that this is clearly not their ancestor. He puts to discussion that the remains of this man are not of Native American descent (even with their ancestors before) because this man had Caucasoid features (facial features that resembled Inew culture).
As barbaric as it may sound to some, the skeleton in question should remain in scientific study hands. They can and have already proven that the bones are not of Native American decent, but of a collective group of humans. Whether or not we come from a collective group of humans is up to debate, yet Chatters has proven that these bones aren’t Native American so he should win, despite the fact that the government is trying to ‘pay back’ the culture which they have been so brutal to in the past.
All of this makes me a little irate. Through this study of one skeleton, Chatters has proven that the ancient world was a brutal place, and not a peaceful one in which most of us assume to be true. Maybe life in the past was not so much different as it is today. I am a firm believer on learning from the past so we do not repeat it. If we just bury this skeleton to appease a certain group, we are not growing to be any different than we were in the past. We cannot just ignore history. To ignore it would be ignoring our future.
