This very interesting Perspectives article was published in the 3 November 2017 issue of Science magazine.  I have linked the PDF of the article here and the main figure is included so you can see the general hypothesis.  This has been called the kelp highway hypothesis and the authors state that most archaeologists as well as scholars in other disciplines now think that the earliest Americans followed the shorelines along the Pacific Rim.  This has become known as the kelp highway because the evidence for it would have been submerged by increases in sea levels occurring since the last glacial maximum, about 26,500 years ago.  

In the Straw Sandals Project, we are beginning to understand how the geographical clustering of sandal construction methods, obvious from the first phylogenetic or similarity trees that we made, can follow the ancient migration routes of humans, determined by genetic methods and also by linguistic studies of the relationships among the world’s languages.

How ancient peoples reached the shores of the Americas is still an open question the subject of debate.  There are many supporters of the Beringia land bridge route and this is the one shown in the figure in this article.  Another option, ancient Americans may have reached our shores on boats and rafts, traveling west to east, has also received interest.  Of course, both routes may have been used.

This pair of sandals is very similar to Japan3 (JpK9) already in the collection.  The nice addition is that we know exactly where in Japan the new sandals were made, a small village in Gifu Prefecture named Shirakawa-go, located at the foot of Mt. Haku-san in the northwest corner of the perfecture.  This village was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995 partly because many traditional Japanese crafts such as sandal weaving are still practiced there.  

Leigh Moyers bought these sandals and took the photos of the village while part of a US State Department delegation to Japan in December of 2016.  This style sandal was used by Samurai warriors in past times as they are lightweight and can be secured onto the lower leg using the long tie cords.  They are still used by some practitioners of martial arts and primarily by monks today. The material used to make these sandals appears to be rice straw.  Since Japan14 is so similar to Japan3, which as already been included in the phylogenetic analysis of the collection, it is possible to use the computer generated designation JpK9 (Japan3) to determine which sandals are most similar to Japan 14.  The answer is interesting and revealing.  I leave it to the interested reader to explore the answer starting on the Sandal Relationships page.

Kennewick Man: A Coevolution of Society and the Genome

The divide between the experimental truths of the hard sciences and the nuances of human culture grows increasingly narrow as each provides important feedback for the other. Rather than existing in separate realms, biological research endeavors often provide eye-opening explanations and rebuttals to age-old traditions and belief systems, and vice versa. Each viewpoint’s response to the other illustrates a dialogue that has only intensified over the centuries: Is scientific evidence more reputable than abstract human intuitions and social cues? Or do historical kinships and ancestral knowledge trump modern research methods? This important relationship became embodied by the discovery and exploration of Kennewick Man, an ancient Native American whose skeletal remains raised both inquiry and controversy among biologists and anthropologists and the resident Native American and Plateau tribes of the West and Northwestern United States. While his life concluded eight to nine thousand years ago, investigators have begun to imagine the human male living among his people on or near the Columbia River in Washington, and how he arrived at the river as his final resting place.

The discovery of Kennewick Man by Dr. James Chatters and colleagues in 1996 was magnified as a hallmark achievement when the findings of similar artifacts at the time were considered; only three other unveilings of human remains had surfaced prior to his uncovering along the Columbia River, marking him as only the second complete skeleton located on the North American continent (Chatters 2016, 55). Not only did his good preservation promise more than enough organic material for genetic, time period, and other analyses, researchers could begin to predict how he fit or clashed with the lineages of the American Indians of colonial America, or perhaps the pre-colonial tribes who preceded these natives. However initial radiocarbon dating soon estimated a birth of eight thousand four hundred years ago. The skull was also notable for its dissimilarities to more modern Native American peoples, displaying a “narrow face [and skull] and receding cheekbones, unlike the short, round skulls . . . [and] broad, flat faces” of the recent American Indians local to the skeleton’s discovery site (Chatters 2016, 63). This test in combination with craniofacial analyses refuted some speculations that Kennewick Man was a more current discovery.

Other opinions that the skeleton represented that of an ancient European were also undermined in light of historical migratory patterns. Certain characteristics of Kennewick Man’s long bones tempted the potential connection to modern Europeans, but as many pre-colonial tribes once migrated from East Asia and Europe to North America, many skeletal traits have been preserved over time across even these global populations (Chatters 2016, 64). This original migratory wave thus gave rise to all modern Native Americans. Divisions subsequently occurred around thirteen thousand years ago consisting of the Athabascans and northern Amerindians and the southern North American Amerindians, and gene flow also spread between the northern populations and the more northern Inuit people who arose from a completely separate migration originating from Siberians in northern Asia from around twenty-four thousand years ago (Raghavan et al. 2015). Even considering genetic mixing, Kennewick Man succeeded these early arrivals after only about three to four thousand years, making him an almost absolute ancestor to all Native Americans who followed him. More recently published analyses of skeletal material support this, reflecting high genetic affinities to Northern Native Americans according to model-based clustering of existing autosomal data (Rasmussen 2015).

Although Kennewick Man’s deep historical roots helped elucidate pre-historic migration into what is now known to be the United States, his distinct features and skeletal make-up appeared to cause more unrest between interested parties than it did placate pressing questions. Ownership of the skeleton was hotly debated between northwestern North American tribes, and also between themselves and the scientists who sought to claim the ground-breaking remains for the sake of research. Simple negotiation was ruled out as the issue soon became a concern for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), legally complicating the argument as to whom Kennewick Man rightfully belonged to (Rasmussen 2015). While the act highlights and enforces important distinctions and protections between the rights of individual families over their dead kin as well as the interests in sacred artifacts for the future generations of an entire tribe, ample argument has been made against NAGPRA as vengeful rather than advocative legislation. Some have held that the act wrongly exceeds its responsibility to solely guard the cultural rights of modern-day Native Americans and instead gives tribes the ability to gain a powerful foothold of revenge against the original white Americans, enabling them to steal back what was once unjustly seized from the Native American tribes who preceded the European settlers (Conklin 2014). However an equally fervent claim exists that the assertiveness of NAGPRA is all but necessary. The rights and interests of Native Americans past and present are being recognized increasingly as valid pursuits on the same level of priority as the more predominant “white” scientific groups, and the handling and collection of their human and cultural artifacts should be monitored to prevent encroachment and desecration. On top of these concerns is also an age-old wariness that, especially in the case of Kennewick Man, the identification of Native American remains as potentially non-Native American (and therefore excluding the relevance of NAGRPA) is in fact a propaganda device, bending scientific results in favor of “white” possession of Native American belongings (Conklin 2014). NAGPRA thus presented ambiguity that challenged researchers with the dilemma of advocating for either their promising findings on human ancestry or the voices of exploited yet historically prominent peoples.

In 2004 the legal conflict sided with scientific endeavors, allowing further study of Kennewick Man after the U.S. Corps of Engineers received significant pressure from citizens, scientists, and statesmen alike in favor of analyzing the skeleton (Rasmussen 2015). The Umatilla fought for ownership most notably for the remains due to religious discouragement against scientific exploitation of the dead, particularly skeletons. Repatriation was advocated as a viable course of action by the Corps, but DNA results would place him differently. Despite strong sentiment that Kennewick Man had been a direct ancestor of modern Native Americans, analyses of his skull determined him as a much closer ancestor of the Polynesian and Ainu peoples. Even given his predominantly Pacific and ancient East Asian origins, genomic data also pinpointed his strongest affinities to be with the Colville people, whom research supported most securely as potential rightful owners of the human remains, a conclusion supported by both autosomal and mitochondrial DNA as well as Y chromosome data (Rasmussen 2015, Raghavan 2015).

The discovery and subsequent debate over Kennewick Man exemplifies not the black-and-white authority of anthropological and biological science, but rather the complementary relationship between social constructs and research. While the true genetic identity of Kennewick Man was revealed to be far from an original Native American, the cultural intuitions of local tribes rightfully challenged and ultimately supported recent scientific revelations about the historical timeline of the skeleton and others like it that may have once existed. NAGPRA served its goal, implementing much-warranted checks and balances to scientists’ domain of curiosity. Kennewick Man stands not only as a symbol of Native American legacy and authority as people and cultures to be protected and celebrated, but also a milestone that helped restore good faith about United States governmental research to modern tribal peoples.

Work Cited

Chatters, James C. “Kennewick Man.” Northern Clans, Northern Traces: Journeys in the Ancient Circumpolar World. Smithsonian Institution, 2004. Web. 27 April 2016.

Chatters, James C. Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans. New York: Touchstone, 2001. Print.

Conklin, Kenneth R. “The NAGPRA Law, and the Kennewick Man Controversy. Includes an article in September 2014 Smithsonian Magazine summarizing the Kennewick case and what was discovered.” 2014. Web. 27 April 2016.

Raghavan, Maanasa et al. “Genomic Evidence for the Pleistocene and Recent Population History of Native Americans.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 349.6250 (2015): aab3884. PMC. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.

Rasmussen, M., et al. “The Ancestry and Affiliations of Kennewick Man.” Nature 523.7561 (2015): 455-8. Web.

Tides

The River commands life and death, and so we follow the ebb of its tide wherever the wind and the waves meet. Many callused feet have padded its bank, soles cradled by soil soaked and dried a thousand times over. There are crystal gems on the surface—fleeting so as not to be mined by human hands—glinting white-hot under the high noon. Millions of these jewels ripple through the current each day, a mix of broken sunlight and the scaly backs of salmon and silvery steelhead trout. We gaze gratefully at these creatures as they leap with new energy in autumn, abundant to fill our stomachs.

The bison and cattle are our companions at the River’s edge, kneeling like beasts in prayer to quench our animal thirsts. Reeds and stalks of long grass snap crisply under our strong grips, and their melon-green shafts wave healthily in the breeze. Deft hands will strip and mold them into a new purpose: the netted bottoms of baskets, a durable patch for a sitting mat, a cover for a sore foot. Hemp transforms into a sturdy blanket for one man’s back, the fibers stained a fiery crimson. What remains becomes a carrying pouch on a woman’s hip as she combs through the grass for roots.

Harsh words shatter the peace. The smooth brows of young children begin to crease. Quarrels ignite among men: stolen rations, a disgruntled loved one, a dead horse. Silver glints like daylight does on the River, this time clutched in the fist of fury. Limbs fly, chests are punctured. A welt becomes an ugly bruise beneath a sullen gaze. A man would find flecks of obsidian in his breast a week later, and another would learn to limp with his pierced hip. The tumult dies with the wind, indistinguishable in an instant. We find ourselves lulled again by the running River, a ceaseless tide of life and death.

Allison Hillmon

Editor’s Note:  Tides is a piece of creative writing submitted by Allison in May of 2016.  It is based on her research into the approximately 9,000 years old skeleton known as Kennewick Man, found along the Columbia River, near Kennewick, Washington in 1996.  “Tides” was submitted as part of Allison’s honors thesis at the University of Connecticut.

Our Straw Sandals Project student intern Allison Hillmon presented her honors thesis project at the McNair Scholars luncheon at the University of Connecticut this past semester.  Allison is on the left in this photo and next to her is the Director of the McNair Scholars Program Dr. Renée Gilberti.  The gallery below is Allison’s PowerPoint presentation just to inform her fellow McNair Scholars and their mentors on what she was doing.  I think it is the first public talk about the Straw Sandals Project.  Allison successfully completed her honors thesis and I will post some of her writings here in the near future.  In addition to re-photographing the entire SSP collection in a much more professional manner, Allison wrote a scholarly report updating the story of Kennewick Man, an ancient skeleton that washed out of a bank along the Columbia River in Washington state, and she wrote an imaginative essay on what it may have been like to be living there in those pre-historic times almost 10,000 years ago!

I am sure that there are small numbers of chemists and materials scientists who weave for a hobby and for relaxation, but when I read the article in Science (22 January 2016) discussed here, I suspected that I would be rare if not unique in being equipped to explain this remarkable chemical synthesis to my weaver friends!

I hope that I can do justice to both communities.  I tend to view the Straw Sandal Project website as a place on the web for biologists who never quite got over wanting to be anthropologists and for weavers and shoe designers looking for inspiration.  But it turns out this biologist majored in chemistry at a small college in Virginia, Hampden-Sydney College with only 500 students at the time and a chemistry department that was small in size but large in opportunities to learn and grow as a scientist.  So, even though I have not read a hard core chemistry research report in years, thanks to some great teachers years ago, I had no problem with the organic and inorganic chemistry in the report by Y. Liu et al. on page 365 titled “Weaving of organic threads into a crystalline covalent organic framework”.

In some ways, it was more challenging to open the pages of Irene Emery’s classic The Primary structure of Fabrics and begin searching for similar weaves and nomenclature.  How many chemists I wonder have a copy of Irene Emery’s opus within arm’s reach!  Science devoted a very nice cover to the story.  The cover was described as an “Illustration of woven molecular fabric.”

My thought was, OK how will my weaver friends see this?  I think Irene would agree that this construction is a balanced plain weave with the warps and wefts made of the same material.  So far so good.  But what about the thread (some would say yarn, but I think the chemists are good with using the term thread).  I would call it plied thread composed of Z-twisted elements.  Oops, this is not what the chemists made.  They used a copper I cation to bind two identical organic molecules.  Four nitrogen atoms, two from each organic molecule formed a reversible coordination complex with the cation.  The organic molecules, think of each as a short piece of thread, are held in just the right position so that they cross or interlace.

My weaver friends are going to want to know if a loom was used.  I think that this copper 1 coordination complex is a molecular loom.  Think of the two organic molecules as threads attached to a loom like warps strung on a typical weaving loom in preparation for weaving.  To extend the threads, the chemist adds a small linear reactive molecule, an imine in this case.  The imines attach to the four ends of the two threads on the molecular loom if you will.  Now the other reactive ends of the imines are still available to add another molecular thread to each one, so the weaving starts by extending the length of the original threads.  Or alternatively, another molecular loom can be added to each free end of the imine group.  At the end of the molecular weaving, the copper cation can be released and so the molecular loom is essentially released from the tiny piece of woven molecular material.  If you look at the cover image, you can see where each tiny loom was situated.  Wherever the two threads interlace is where the copper 1 coordination complex, the molecular loom, was set up.  So there are many tiny looms at work at the same time to weave a molecular textile.  Each crossover point marks the place where a molecular loom set up a starting place with two molecular threads oriented for weaving in four different directions.

How will this new kind of woven material be used?  Certainly a major use will be in nano-scale (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter, if you can visualize that: I cannot!) machines to create special environments for chemical reactions or to create surfaces on which to organize mechanical tasks.  Another idea presented in a perspectives article titled “Interlacing molecular threads” by Enrique Gutierrez-Puebla in the same issue of Science is that these materials may be considered as molecular sponges capable of sopping up metal ions in liquid waste. An idea that popped into my mind as I was reading an article on new ways to restore and protect works of art, especially out of doors, such as murals and mosaics, may be to cover them with just the right kind of molecular woven material tailored to counteract corrosive chemicals specific to the environment of each piece.  See article on recent restoration techniques.

One final observation is that most of the authors of the scientific paper are Asian scientists.  I wonder if in China and Japan they wore and played with woven baskets and scandals.  Did early contact with woven materials influence their creative thinking about approaches to molecular weaving?

My friend and colleague Robert M. Tanguay and his wife Nicole were on an extended visit to Paris recently and they found a small shop that had the Moroccan hand woven raffia shoes pictured here for sale. Robert and Nicole purchased three pairs and generously donated them to the Straw Sandals Project.  There are no signs of wear on the bottoms of the soles and yet the shoes, especially the vamps, do not appear to be made recently. None of them is stamped “made in……” although there is a stamp mark on the inner sole of one pair that I may ultimately be able to trace. I think it is safe to assume that they were made in Morocco, based on the distinctive styling of these shoes. Why is this even a question you may ask? The distinctive weave seen here, and I have read that it arose in North Africa in what is the region of present day Morocco, is very popular today among high end shoe designers.

The second image shows a pair of the Moroccan shoes from Paris along with a pair of Ferragamo flats on your left and a pair of Carrie Forbes flats on your right. A close-up in the third image shows the identical Moroccan weave in each shoe. The latter two pairs of shoes were made in Italy.

The next image shows a pair of Joseph Azagury woman’s shoes designed in London and made in Italy. Joseph Azagury shoes are now handcrafted in London.  Again, the distinctive Moroccan weave was used to make the vamp. The designer Joseph Azagury was born in Morocco, raised in Italy and now lives in London! The final image shows the Azagury shoe beside a Moroccan shoe, verified as made in Morocco, that is item Mor2 in the Straw Sandals Project collection. The close-up shows the Moroccan weave in each shoe. Contemporary designers are helping the weavers and their ancient handcrafting and distinctive weaving to survive in our modern world.