Almost 8,000-year-old cranium found in Minnesota River

A partial skull from nearly 8,000 years ago that was found by two kayakers in a river final summer season can be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 Might 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial cranium that was found last summer by two kayakers in Minnesota shall be returned to Native American officials after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years outdated.

The kayakers found the skull in the drought-depleted Minnesota River about 110 miles (180 kilometers) west of Minneapolis, Renville County Sheriff Scott Hable said.

Considering it may be associated to a lacking person case or homicide, Hable turned the skull over to a medical expert and ultimately to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to find out it was likely the skull of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable said.

"It was an entire shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable advised Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the man had a despair in his cranium that was “maybe suggestive of the cause of demise.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his workplace was criticized by several Native Americans, who said publishing photographs of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable stated his office removed the submit.

"We didn’t mean for it to be offensive in any respect,” Hable said.

Hable said the stays will be turned over to Higher Sioux Neighborhood tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Resources Specialist Dylan Goetsch stated in a statement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were notified in regards to the discovery, which is required by state legal guidelines that govern the care and repatriation of Native American stays.

Goetsch mentioned the Facebook put up “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “a little piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, stated Wednesday that the cranium was definitely from an ancestor of one of many tribes still dwelling in the area, The New York Times reported.

She said the younger man would have possible eaten a eating regimen of vegetation, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, reasonably than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s most likely not that many people at the moment wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years ago, as a result of, like I mentioned, the glaciers have only retreated a few hundreds years earlier than that,” Blue stated. “That interval, we don’t know a lot about it.”