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In the summer of 1996, two college students literally stumbled across a human skull while standing on a riverbank watching a hydroplane race. Thinking that they had discovered a murder victim, they notified the police, who called in a forensic anthropologist to investigate. The anthropologist, James Chatters, observed that the skeleton had features that looked different from Native American remains found in the area. In fact, his initial examination led him to believe that the bones could have been those of an early European settler to the Pacific Northwest. But then he noticed the tip of a stone spearpoint embedded in the hip of the skeleton, later named "Kennewick Man." He sent a small sample of bone to be carbon-dated, and received a surprising result: the bones were over 9,000 years old. Under a federal law known as NAGPRA (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), all Native American remains found on federal land must be returned to local Native American tribes for burial. The Army Corps of Engineers, which controls the stretch of riverbank on which Kennewick Man was discovered, took the remains from Chatters and prepared to return them to a confederation of local tribes. But a group of eight scientists from the Smithsonian, Oregon State University and other organizations, sued the Corps to stop the remains from being repatriated. They claim that there is no evidence that Kennewick Man is a direct ancestor of any of the tribes involved. In fact, they argue, the remains aren't "Native American" under the normal definition of the words, and so don't fall under the NAGPRA law. The scientists want the remains to be made available to anthropologists for further study. On the other side lie the historical and religious beliefs of the Native Americans. "If this individual is truly over 9,000 years old, that only substantiates our belief that he is Native American," said Armand Minthorn, a Board of Trustees member and religious leader of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. "From our oral histories, we know that our people have been part of this land since the beginning of time. We do not believe that our people migrated here from another continent, as the scientists do." This week, the Army Corps of Engineers finished covering the site on which the remains were found with rocks and dirt, and are preparing to plant trees. The Corps says that it is part of a program to prevent erosion and looting of the site, but many scientists are concerned that the burial will prevent them from finding any artifacts that might add context to the Kennewick find. And possession of the skeleton remains undecided. On this segment of Science Friday, we'll talk about the find, and how it fits into the bigger picture - both of scientists and of the local tribes. Plus....Chances are pretty good that a lot of the software that's letting you read this web page is free. (And no, we DON'T mean the copy of Word that you copied illegally from your uncle!) Many ISPs use Linux, a free operating system similar to Unix. Others use a free Unix-like system called FreeBSD. Over 50% of web servers use Apache software - also free. Languages like Perl often process online forms or provide other kinds on on-line interactivity. And 75% of the email on the net is routed by a program called sendmail, which (you guessed it) is free. "Free" or "open source" software is free to be studied, tinkered with, and improved. The nuts and bolts of the programs are out in the open, or one can get them. But how does the process actually work? What motivates people to labor over their keyboards to create software that will often be given away? And what keeps the process from degenerating into complete anarchy, with millions of copies of software of dubious quality floating around? Many devotees of the movement say that their software is often better than software developed in traditional software companies. By allowing many people with different ideas and different skills to tinker to their heart's content, they claim, free software evolves much more quickly than commercial software, bugs are stamped out faster, and the quality improves. Netscape recently released its source code to the public to give the process a try, hoping to keep its browser software on the cutting edge. On this segment of Science Friday, we'll take a behind the scenes look at the open-source movement.
Guests: Adeline Fredin Eric Raymond Richard Stallman Books/Articles Discussed: "The
Cathedral and the Bazaar," by Eric Raymond. Related Links: Free Software Foundation |
