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

A partial skull from almost 8,000 years in the past that was found by two kayakers in a river last summer will probably be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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

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

Thinking it could be associated to a missing person case or murder, Hable turned the skull over to a health worker and finally 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 stated.

"It was a whole shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable informed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the man had a depression in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the cause of loss of life.”

After the sheriff posted about the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by a number of Native Individuals, who stated publishing images of ancestral remains was offensive to their tradition.

Hable stated his workplace removed the submit.

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

Hable mentioned the remains will be turned over to Higher Sioux Neighborhood tribal officials.

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

Goetsch said the Facebook post “confirmed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “slightly piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, said Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of many tribes still residing within the area, The New York Instances reported.

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

“There’s in all probability not that many individuals at the moment wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years ago, as a result of, like I mentioned, the glaciers have solely retreated a number of hundreds years before that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”