Kennewick Man Certainly it is important to honor the cultural heritage of the past; however there is a limit to the amount of restitution that needs to be repaid to cultures. In the article "Antiquities, the World is your Homeland," author Edward Rothstein (2008) explains that throughout the world countries are demanding a return of their ancient artifacts to the homeland, the land of their origin. The problem with this is that many of the ancient cultures do not exist anymore. For example, Greece has demanded a return of anything Greek which has left the country, but modern Greece is as far removed from Ancient Greece as Great Britain is removed from the time of the Norman Conquest. It is a wholly new civilization with little resemblance to the ancient state. Yet, the country demands that since it has the same name and occupies some of the same land, they are still the same. If these dictums are allowed to continue it will not only be ancient artifacts and antiquities which are demanded to be repatriated,...

In the case of the Kennewick Man, the Umatilla tribe of Native Americans claimed the skeleton as theirs and was allowed to bury it without providing any evidence. Historically, it is not even proven that the Umatilla were in the region at the time of the skeleton's life, more than 9,000 years ago. Scientists had to prove genetically and anthropologically that the skeleton could not have been a member of that tribe, a process that took them more than a decade. During that period, years of research and investigation were lost; millions of dollars had to be spent on legal action as well as scientific experimentation. This has proven true in other similar cases as well, like with the UCSD case and the Kumeyaay Tribe. In that case, although DNA has not been able to disprove a connection, they have been able to prove that the Kumeyaays did not move into the region at the time that the skeleton would have been alive and that they Kumeyaays traditionally cremated their dead which…