Kennewick Man is the name generally given to the skeletal remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. Two young men discovered the skull of Kennewick Man when they stepped on something that looks like a large rock.
They had stumbled upon a human skull while wading in the shallows along the Columbia River. They gave the skull to police, They called the police. The police brought in the Benton County coroner, Floyd Johnson, who was puzzled by the skull, and he in turn contacted James Chatters, a local archaeologist. Chatters and the coroner returned to the site and, in the dying light of evening a skeleton was found scattered nearby, complete with a stone spear point driven into the hip.
They plucked almost an entire skeleton from the mud and sand. It is one of the most complete ancient skeletons ever found and anthropologists determined it was at least 9,200 years old. It was the oldest nearly complete skeleton found in North America, but the discovery was more than a thrilling moment for archaeologists. The find kicked off a long-running scientific and cultural controversy.— and it sparked a legal battle that lasted more than two decades.
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