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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial cranium that was discovered final summer time 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 discovered the skull in 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 lacking particular person case or homicide, Hable turned the skull over to a health worker and eventually to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to determine it was doubtless the skull of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable said.

"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 despair in his cranium that was “maybe suggestive of the reason for demise.”

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

Hable said his workplace removed the publish.

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

Hable said the stays will probably be turned over to Upper Sioux Community tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets 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 remains.

Goetsch stated the Facebook put up “confirmed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “somewhat piece of historical past.”

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

She said the young man would have doubtless eaten a weight loss program 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 the moment wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I stated, the glaciers have solely retreated a couple of 1000's years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”