They Dug Up Their Graves And Built A Cage With Their Bones
20th Century archaeologists, anthropologists, and grave robbery
When I was young, I wanted to be an archaeologist. Today, I’m glad I didn’t make that choice because I know I couldn’t have successfully stood up to the conglomeration of grave-robbers, data-falsifiers, and backstabbers that seem to make up 20th century anthropology and archaeology.
One of my first jobs was as “the intern” at the San Bernardino County Museum. One of my job responsibilities was cleaning and maintaining the figure of Louis Leakey, the world-famous expert in early human origins. Dr. Leakey had worked with Ruth “Dee” Simpson, the museum’s archaeologist, in excavating the Calico Early Man site in the Mojave Desert. Much like my mother’s situation as an early animation artist, I can find hundreds, if not thousands, of articles discussing Louis Leakey’s role at the Calico site, and … one … about “Dee” (see end of this article). Some woman wrote it. Her name might be Amy Sterling Casil.
Dee was widely mocked and vilified for her theories that early man could possibly have lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in what is today, one of the world’s harshest desert environments. She and Dr. Leakey had unearthed artifacts that they said were stone tools.
But no bones.
By the time I had this job in 1979, other people had been digging up bones and artifacts everywhere for decades.
Then they would throw them in boxes. Boxes of skulls. Boxes of femurs. Boxes of toe bones. Boxes of teeth.
All mixed together.
Nobody other than the descendants of the original owners of the bones and teeth thought twice about this ghoulish, disrespectful, crude, and scientifically dubious practice.
Most of these human remains belonged to Native Americans.
How would you like it if someone went to the cemetery and dug up your grandmother, and put her teeth in a box and her leg bones in another?
Maybe parts of grammy would get pulled out here and there and passed around first-semester anatomy classes.
That’s valid use, right? I mean — why would anyone care about something like that?
I read ProPublica’s in-depth report on the continued misuse of Native American remains by the University of California, Berkeley. Like many institutions that are publicly regarded as “liberal,” Berkeley is intractably retrograde and racist in its inability to return Native American remains to their ancestral resting places and descendants who wish to care for them.
The man who is primarily responsible for decades of neglect, abuse, and misuse of the remains of Indigenous people’s ancestors is recently-retired UC Berkeley professor Tim White. I can find no reference to White having any involvement in the Calico controversy: he had bigger “discoveries” to make and use as cudgels over others to prove his firmly-held opinions on unknowable things about unknown past lives. He is also associated with the Leakeys so he probably stayed out of the vicious battles over whether or not there were old stone tools and humans in the Mojave.
White is recognized as the “discoverer” of Ardi, or ardipithecus ramidus, an early hominid from Africa who is believed to be a human ancestor. I see he actually is from my “neck of the woods” and is a graduate of Rim of the World High School and the University of California, Riverside. White’s obvious “qualifications” as a 20th century scientist have led him to author several books, lead a “Great Minds” course on human origins, and bitterly battle Indigenous leaders who desired their ancestors’ remains to be returned to safe burial locations — instead of moldering in boxes mixed with many others in UC Berkeley basements. White has not only been intractable in “negotiations” over the return of hundreds of human remains, he has even sued Native American tribes and some of his colleagues at UC Berkeley to enforce his right to keep bones in wooden boxes so that from time to time, they can be passed around a classroom to illustrate basic anatomy concepts.
There’s no respect evident in White’s behavior, which, if UC Berkeley were what its publicity says it is, should embarrass the institution and alumna.
But we all know how “embarrassed” people like full Berkeley professors are about anything — which is to say, not at all, never — and at the same time, poised and well-prepared to attack and harm people they have already wronged who have the temerity to complain.
I’m not an anthropologist or archaeologist, so I don’t understand the validity or need to dig up over 100,000 people’s graves and use their remains as “teaching tools” — that gather dust in boxes, mingled with many other remains.
Congress passed a law in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, to create a pathway for colleges, universities, and museums to return Native American artifacts and ancestral remains to their homes and descendants. Like so many other efforts to rectify long-standing violations of dignity and civil rights, “progress” in this has been slow. While my former employer, the San Bernardino County Museum, has been forthcoming with identifying and returning artifacts, others, in addition to UC Berkeley, are still holding onto remains, and even concealing the artifacts and remains that they do have.
Selfishness, cruelty, and callous disregard would cover the thought processes and behavior of men like White and his predecessors, eager grave-diggers and desecrators who treated Native people’s land and burial sites with all the dignity and care of a Scooby Doo villain.
I’ve already experienced the maturity, intellectual capacity, and empathetic nature of many men in the science fiction field. These men have been almost universally lauded as ones that will not only predict, but will shape “our” future. Their qualifications for this lofty role include inability to hold a civil conversation, disregard of mountains of data, and confirmation bias to questionable (at best) personal morals. To a person, they are all eager and frequent thieves of others time, work, and talent.
I think few understand just how poor the ethics and morals of some 20th century scientists, exemplified by Tim White, were and remain to this day.
Younger scientists do not share the biases and disregard for human rights and dignity of their forebears. There are publications like Sapiens which consider humanity and human origins with dignity and equity.
And then there are grave-robbers like White, whose malign and discriminatory influence still prevents Indigenous people from recovering the remains of their ancestors and returning them to their proper places with as much dignity as possible.
I’m sorry I had to come up during a time so heavily influenced by men like White — but glad that at last, this dark time seems to be coming to an end.
More about Ruth “Dee” Simpson: