For Release: January 31st, 2000
In 1996, two college students stumbled across human bones on the banks of the Columbia River in Washington State. A forensic scientist identified the skull as Caucasoid and assumed it was that of a 19th-century settler. But a prehistoric flint arrowhead was found embedded in the hip bone, and the bones turned out to be nearly 10,000 years old.
Nova "Mystery of the First Americans," airing Tuesday, Feb. 15 at 9/8 p.m. CT on KET and Saturday, Feb. 19 at 7/6 p.m. CT on KET2, investigates the discovery that shocked anthropologists, who had long assumed that the only people in the Americas at the end of the Ice Age were the descendants of hunters who had crossed the Bering Strait from Asia. Is the skull of Kennewick Man--as he is now known--really Caucasoid? And could Kennewick Man have come from somewhere besides Asia?
The mysterious skull--along with several other startling recent finds--challenges a deeply entrenched picture of the settlement of the New World. It has also embroiled scientists in a bitter conflict with Native-American groups who want the scientific study of their ancestors halted.
Whom and what do Kennewick Man and others represent? Nova follows the efforts of paleo-anthropologists to decode the story hidden in the bones of the man who perished in the Columbia valley 10,000 years ago.
Nova "Mystery of the First Americans," presented by WGBH/Boston, is closed-captioned for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Viewers can find out more about programming on KET by visiting the KET Web site at http://www.ket.org, a Kentucky.com affiliate.
Contact: Todd Piccirilli
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