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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 Might 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial cranium that was found last summer time by two kayakers in Minnesota might be returned to Native American officials after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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

Considering it may be associated to a missing individual case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a medical examiner and finally to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to determine it was probably the skull of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable stated.

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

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

After the sheriff posted in regards to the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native People, who said publishing photographs of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable stated his office eliminated the submit.

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

Hable said the stays shall be turned over to Upper Sioux Group tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets 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 laws that govern the care and repatriation of Native American stays.

Goetsch said the Facebook submit “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 history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, stated Wednesday that the skull was undoubtedly from an ancestor of one of many tribes still residing within the area, The New York Occasions reported.

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

“There’s in all probability not that many people at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, as a result of, like I stated, the glaciers have solely retreated just a few hundreds years before that,” Blue stated. “That interval, we don’t know a lot about it.”