IN THE WAKE OF THE JOMON: Stone Age Mariners and a Voyage Across the Pacific, by Jon Turk. New York: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 2005, 287 pages, with b/w illustrations, $24.95 (cloth).

Midway through "In the Wake of the Jomon" comes a paragraph that poses all the questions Jon Turk ponders in this book.

"My introduction to Kennewick Man echoed through my musings like a voice from a monk in a Tibetan monastery: 'Paddle three thousand miles across the ocean wilderness, and when you come back, describe the sound of one hand clapping. Or, if you can't answer that one, tell me why people are the way they are. Tell me why "Homo erectus" migrated to Siberia or why Jomon families left their homes and sailed north, into the ice -- into the unknown. And while you're at it, tell me why Jon Turk chooses to camp on these snow-covered beaches.' "

Kennewick Man is the name given a male skeleton found along the Columbia River in Washington in 1996. Radiocarbon tests said he had lived there about 9,500 years ago. By law his relics would have gone to Amerindian tribes that claimed he was an ancestor. Except the bones appeared to be Caucasoid. And some anthropologists wanted to subject the ancient hunter to further scientific indignities. As David Hurst Thomas' book "Skull Wars" puts it, Kennewick Man has become the battleground for Native American identity.