A REAL Grok, "Kennewick Man" page 2

[Alex Good]

Men generally grow facial hair post-puberty, and I don't think they had Gilette back then. I think it's a fair assumption that most men had beards prehistorically.

I thought he had the same genes as modern native americans (which would mean no beard). I missed the part about him being asian.

[Damiana]

Oh, stupid me. I never thought certain races do not have beards...I know my Asian guy friends have very little facial hair, I didn't know about Native Americans though, but I guess this explains why I've never seen one with a beard :P

[Alex Good]

Wait, asian = no beard as well? Then they still got the picture wrong! And yeah, the whole facial hair thing is why I'm sure I'm not part native. Which means, by necessity, that ancestor of mine with dark skin was part black. Since, you know, who else has dark skin in 1800s north america?

[Nady]

Wait, asian = no beard as well? Then they still got the picture wrong! And yeah, the whole facial hair thing is why I'm sure I'm not part native. Which means, by necessity, that ancestor of mine with dark skin was part black. Since, you know, who else has dark skin in 1800s north america?

chinese man with beard - Google Search

[Lewis]

North america 9500 years ago. Natives don't have beards.

Image doesn't show for me unless I remove the "?" and stray characters -- some kind of referrer? -- off the end of the URL thus:

Prehistoric 'Kennewick Man' Was All Beefcake : NPR

Lots of alternative reconstructions on Google images.

This one is very hirsute.

Some Native Americans did pull out their beard as it came, and most seem to have had little. How much people have across Asia seems to be variable.

I guess he might not look exactly like any modern people he is known to be related to. Polynesian DNA supposedly shows that they, or most of them at any rate, must have journeyed from around where Taiwan is now. Do they necessarily look very like people from Taiwan, though?

It has been said in the past that Kennewick Man's skull is rather similar in shape to that of the the Ainu (an indigenous people displaced from most of what's now Japan a long time ago). They're definitely bearded. That may be why he's been done with a beard. But maybe the artist was just thinking, "They didn't have shavers in those days." Maybe something a bit more wispy or nothing at all would have been better.

But let's forget his facial hair -- the rest of it is where the interest lies.

I was interested by his muscularity. He's not tall, but he's built like a professional sportsman.

The degree of inter-personal violence he seems to have encountered in life is also notable:

[he] got hit on the head a few times and was stabbed with a basalt rock point that got stuck in his hip