In 1996, two college students walking along the Columbia River in Washington State

stumbled upon what turned out to be an ancient human skull.

What they couldn't have known was that their discovery would lead to a better understanding of

how humans came to the Americas as well as

years of scientific cultural and political controversies. Learn more about

Kenowick man and how it roiled the world of paleontology and led to a massive

controversy on this episode of

everything everywhere daily. The Kennewick Man's story begins innocently enough.

On July 28, 1996, two college students, Will Thomas and David Dacey,

were observing hydroplane races on the Columbia River near Kenowick Washington in the

southeastern corner of the state. On the bank of the river they came across a human

skull which had been exposed by erosion from the flowing water.

Assuming that they had stumbled upon a homicide, they contacted the police who then brought in the county corner.

The coroner went to the site and treated it like a normal case, but he quickly realized that something was wrong.

The skull didn't seem normal. He suspected that this

wasn't the skull of a recently deceased human. He called in an archaeologist

from Central Washington University named James Chatters.

Over a period of 10 visits to the site, they managed to collect over 350 bone and bone

fragments, which were 90% of the full skeleton of an adult human male. They figured the body was from the 19th century. They sent a bone

fragment to the University of California Riverside for radiocarbon dating and the

results they got back were not at all what they expected. The skeleton

wasn't a hundred years old. It was approximately 9,000 years old. It was dubbed

...