Nearly 8,000-year-old skull present in Minnesota River

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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in Minnesota will be returned to Native American officials after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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

Considering it could be related to a lacking particular person case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and ultimately to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to find out it was possible the skull of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable said.

"It was a whole shock to us that that bone was that old,” Hable told Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the person had a melancholy in his cranium that was “maybe suggestive of the cause of loss of life.”

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

Hable said his workplace eliminated the put up.

"We didn’t imply for it to be offensive whatsoever,” Hable said.

Hable said the remains can be turned over to Higher Sioux Group tribal officials.

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

Goetsch mentioned the Fb put up “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “a bit 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 many tribes nonetheless dwelling within the area, The New York Occasions reported.

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

“There’s in all probability not that many people at the moment wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I stated, the glaciers have only retreated a couple of thousands years earlier than that,” Blue mentioned. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”