Practically 8,000-year-old cranium found in Minnesota River

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

ByThe Related Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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

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

Thinking it might be related to a missing individual case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and finally to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to find out it was possible the cranium of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable said.

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

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

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

Hable stated his office eliminated the post.

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

Hable mentioned the stays will probably be turned over to Higher Sioux Group tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch mentioned in an announcement 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 stays.

Goetsch stated the Fb post “showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “just a little piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, said Wednesday that the cranium was positively from an ancestor of one of many tribes still dwelling within the space, The New York Instances reported.

She said the younger man would have likely eaten a diet of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, moderately than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s probably not that many individuals at the moment wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I mentioned, the glaciers have solely retreated just a few 1000's years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That interval, we don’t know a lot about it.”