He lay undisturbed for 9000 years but for the past nine he has been at the centre of a bitter legal tug of war.
“Kennewick Man”, an almost-complete human skeleton, was discovered by college students in 1996 next to the Columbia river in Kennewick, Washington. He is coveted by scientists anxious to study his unusual features, and by Native American tribes who claim he is one of their ancestors. They are equally anxious to rebury him.
The courts decided last year that the tribes could not prove ancestry, and 11 scientists were given from 6 to 15 July to study…
