Stumbled upon history: two men find 9,000-year-old skeleton in Washington that rewrote the story of earl Americans

For something that spent nearly 9,000 years buried in the earth, Kennewick Man caused an unusual amount of trouble above it. The nearly complete skeleton, found by two spectators at a boat race in Kennewick, Washington, in 1996, turned out to be one of the oldest and most complete sets of human remains ever discovered in North America. And there was more to know.

Who was the Kennewick Man?

I’ve never really considered being at a sporting event and then stumbling across some ancient bones in the muck, but that’s exactly what happened when Will Thomas and David Deacy noticed something strange in the Columbia River shallows. They fished out a skull and took it to the police clearly not knowing the important history behind it.

Initial tests dated the skeleton – later dubbed ‘Kennewick Man’ or ‘The Ancient One’ – to around 8,400 years before present. His bones suggested a tall, muscular man in his forties, probably a coastal hunter who’d taken a stone spear to the hip and survived. Early analysis of his skull shape led some scientists to suggest he wasn’t closely related to today’s Native Americans. That triggered a prolonged legal and political fight over who had the right to claim his remains: researchers or tribes.

How did Kennewick Man change what we know about early Americans?

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Native American tribes, and anthropologists all got involved. Lawsuits were filed. Scientists insisted the remains needed study. Tribes, citing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), demanded reburial. It all hinged on identity – who this man really was.

Then, nearly 20 years later, DNA testing finally offered a conclusive answer. According to a 2015 study published in Nature, Kennewick Man was closely related to modern Native Americans, particularly the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. The earlier skull comparisons? Outdated and misleading.

So, while there was plenty mystery surrounding the find, initially and for some time after, the real story – if you consider Indigenous history and scientific rigor valuable – is very significant. He wasn’t an outsider... he was an ancestor.

In 2017, the Ancient One was buried in a tribal ceremony attended by more than 200 people.

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