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

A partial cranium from nearly 8,000 years in the past that was found by two kayakers in a river last summer shall be returned to Native American officers in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 Might 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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

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 missing particular person case or murder, Hable turned the skull over to a health worker and finally to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon dating to determine it was doubtless the cranium 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 old,” Hable informed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the man had a despair in his skull that was “maybe suggestive of the reason for death.”

After the sheriff posted about the discovery on Wednesday, his workplace was criticized by a number of Native Americans, who said publishing photos of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable stated his office eliminated the put up.

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

Hable said the remains shall be turned over to Upper Sioux Group tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Resources Specialist Dylan Goetsch mentioned 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 said the Facebook post “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “slightly piece of historical past.”

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

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

“There’s most likely not that many people at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I said, the glaciers have solely retreated a couple of hundreds years before that,” Blue stated. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”