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

A partial skull from practically 8,000 years ago that was found by two kayakers in a river last summer season might be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Related 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 be returned to Native American officers after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years old.

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

Thinking it could be associated to a missing individual case or homicide, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and ultimately to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to find out it was seemingly the cranium of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable mentioned.

"It was an entire shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable advised Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the man had a depression in his cranium that was “maybe suggestive of the cause of loss of life.”

After the sheriff posted about the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native People, who said publishing images of ancestral stays was offensive to their culture.

Hable said his workplace removed the publish.

"We didn’t mean for it to be offensive by any means,” Hable mentioned.

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

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch mentioned 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 remains.

Goetsch stated the Facebook publish “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the individual a Native American and referring to the stays as “somewhat piece of historical past.”

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

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

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