K-Man 2005. I haven't yet this year put up anything new concerning my pet cause, Kennewick Man. Yeah, I know, I gotta get around to redoing the stylesheet for K-Man's page. And putting in my two cents on his Wikipedia page, which can be most charitably described right now as not particularly informative. ("Caucasic genes"? "Caucasic genes"?)

I heard some pretty disheartening scuttlebutt over the holidays concerning the probable passage of Senate Bill 2843, the stealth amendment to NAGPRA. If you're unfamiliar with the issue, and would like to know why I think it's a bad thing, or how to contact your congressman to object to this amendment, you can follow the links above, and find more information here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Or just go to the K-man page for the above and more general information.


Posted by Moira Breen at 31 January 2005 04:31 PM
Comments

Did you get the email I sent earlier, asking if you had heard about the ongoing controversy over homo floresiensis? It appears to have taken a rather Kennewick-like turn recently, in a sort of "if you can't disprove their thesis, confiscate the fossils" sort of way.

(Please note that I don't have any sorts of opinions about what the fossils really are. I just find the argument interesting at the moment.)

Posted by: Phil Fraering on February 1, 2005 08:45 PM

I mailed the following, but I thought I'd post it here in case it's getting deleted in the filters, as you suggested in your email:

>
>
I had sent two messages, one of which had actual url's,
and is at home. I'm at work right now (work, the curse of
the blogging class...)

Anyway, to make a long story short: there's a dispute going on
between the joint Indonesian/Australian team that discovered the
fossils and think it's a new species (an offshoot of h. erectus)
and a group headed by one of the major Indonesian officials in
charge of managing archaeological digs in the country, who believes
the skeletons are pygmy modern (relatively, anyway; you know how
those pesky geologists are) h. sap. sap. suffering from some form
of microencephaly or hydroencephaly.

The latter person, professor Teuku Jacob, now has custody of the
fossils, and the original team doesn't have access at the moment.

(This may have recently changed again; I haven't had time to catch
up lately).

Anyway, here's one url I have handy, and I'll look up more later
when I get home:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11570976%255E30417,00.html

(what the heck, I have some more):

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1257717.htm

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2005/01/18/new_human_species/

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/0,12243,1388881,00.html

(May replicate earlier content)

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,11881861,00.html

Phil


Posted by: Phil Fraering on February 2, 2005 10:32 AM

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