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

A partial cranium from nearly 8,000 years ago that was discovered by two kayakers in a river last summer time will probably be returned to Native American officers in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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

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

Pondering it could be associated to a missing individual case or murder, Hable turned the skull over to a medical examiner and ultimately to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to find out it was seemingly the skull of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable mentioned.

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

The anthropologist decided the person had a depression in his cranium that was “perhaps suggestive of the reason for loss of life.”

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

Hable stated his office removed the put up.

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

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

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch said in an announcement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist have been notified concerning the discovery, which is required by state legal guidelines that govern the care and repatriation of Native American stays.

Goetsch mentioned the Fb publish “confirmed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the remains as “slightly piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, stated Wednesday that the cranium was positively from an ancestor of one of many tribes nonetheless residing within the area, The New York Occasions reported.

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

“There’s most likely not that many people at the moment wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I stated, the glaciers have only retreated just a few hundreds years before that,” Blue stated. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”