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

A partial cranium from almost 8,000 years in the past that was found by two kayakers in a river last summer time will probably 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 discovered last summer time by two kayakers in Minnesota might be returned to Native American officers after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years old.

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 could be associated to a missing person case or homicide, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and finally to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to determine it was seemingly the cranium of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable stated.

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

The anthropologist determined the man had a depression in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the cause of death.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his workplace was criticized by a number of Native Americans, who stated publishing photographs of ancestral stays was offensive to their culture.

Hable said his workplace removed the put up.

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

Hable stated the remains can be turned over to Higher Sioux Community tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Sources Specialist Dylan Goetsch mentioned in a press release that neither the council nor the state archaeologist have been notified concerning the discovery, which is required by state laws that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.

Goetsch stated the Facebook put up “showed a whole lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the stays as “a little piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, mentioned Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of many tribes nonetheless living within the area, The New York Times reported.

She said the young man would have possible eaten a eating regimen of crops, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small area, moderately 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 in the past, as a result of, like I said, the glaciers have only retreated a couple of 1000's years before that,” Blue said. “That interval, we don’t know a lot about it.”