Practically 8,000-year-old cranium present in Minnesota River

A partial cranium from practically 8,000 years in the past 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 read

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial skull that was found final summer by two kayakers in Minnesota will probably be returned to Native American officials after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years previous.

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

Considering it is likely to be associated to a missing individual case or homicide, Hable turned the skull over to a medical examiner and eventually to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to determine it was probably the skull of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable said.

"It was a complete shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable instructed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the man had a depression in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the reason for dying.”

After the sheriff posted about the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native People, who said publishing images of ancestral remains was offensive to their culture.

Hable mentioned his office eliminated the publish.

"We didn’t mean for it to be offensive whatsoever,” Hable mentioned.

Hable said the stays will be turned over to Upper Sioux Group tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Sources Specialist Dylan Goetsch stated in an announcement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were notified about the discovery, which is required by state laws that govern the care and repatriation of Native American stays.

Goetsch said the Facebook publish “confirmed a whole lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “a bit of piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, stated Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of the tribes still residing in the space, The New York Times reported.

She said the young man would have doubtless eaten a food regimen of vegetation, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, fairly than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s probably not that many people at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years ago, because, like I mentioned, the glaciers have only retreated a few hundreds years before that,” Blue mentioned. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”