Sidestep: Claiming what isn't yours

Two ancient skeletons uncovered in 1976 on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, during construction at the home of a University of California chancellor, may be among the most valuable for genetic analysis in the continental United States. Dated between 9,000 and 9,600 years old, the exceptionally preserved bones could potentially produce the oldest complete human genome from the continent. But only if scientists aren't barred from studying them. Attempts to unlock the skeletons' genetic secrets are stalled in a dispute pitting UC scientists against their own administration.

Before samples can be extracted for genetic analysis, the scientists fear administrators will give the bones to politically powerful local Native Americans who could permanently block study. Some Native Americans believe scientific research amounts to desecration of remains, and Benegas said he personally is against studies. "The university has handled this poorly over the years," he said. "We have no trust in them. They have treated the remains of our ancestors without respect."

Scientists say UC is overlooking two key points.

First, there has been no official determination the bones are actually from ancestors of modern Native Americans. Though many tribes believe their history goes further back, scientists can only confidently trace the ancestry of Native Americans to about 7,000 years ago.

Second, scientific evidence shows skeletons around this age are not always related to those who now live near burial sites. For example, last year Willerslev sequenced the genome of a 5,000-year-old man in Greenland and found he was descended from Siberian ancestors, not today's Greenland tribes. "It is unscientific to provide them to local people," said Willerslev. In 2012 federal officials issued new NAGPRA rules that make it easier to return bones and funerary objects that are not culturally affiliated to tribes.

UCSD scientists determined the La Jolla skeletons are not culturally affiliated to any tribe. In fact, isotopic analysis done 30 years ago in Schoeninger's lab (and published in 2009) showed the bones reflected a diet of seafood and marine mammals, not terrestrial foods such as nuts and wild fruits like the early Kumeyaay ate.

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Like this story, our bones, when presented, will be claimed by tribes not even distantly related to these tall people as they were here long before the Polynesian migrations began. Just the carbon dating, let alone the DNA sequence, will prove this. Once finally accepted these skeletons exist, this will not stop Maori claiming what they currently deny exists now. Over our dead bodies will they claim them. They belong to all who were born and live in NZ.