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

A partial skull from nearly 8,000 years ago that was discovered by two kayakers in a river final summer can be returned to Native American officials 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in Minnesota will likely be returned to Native American officials after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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

Thinking it could be related to a missing person case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and finally to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to find out it was possible the skull of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable stated.

"It was a complete shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable informed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the person had a melancholy in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the reason for dying.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native Americans, who stated publishing photographs of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable mentioned his office removed the put up.

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

Hable mentioned the remains can be turned over to Higher Sioux Community tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Resources Specialist Dylan Goetsch stated in a statement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist had been notified in regards to the discovery, which is required by state legal guidelines that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.

Goetsch mentioned the Fb submit “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, mentioned Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of the tribes still dwelling within the space, The New York Occasions reported.

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

“There’s in all probability not that many people at the moment wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, as a result of, like I said, the glaciers have solely retreated a couple of 1000's years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”