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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 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 previous.

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

Pondering it might be related to a missing particular person case or homicide, Hable turned the skull over to a medical expert and ultimately to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon dating to find out it was seemingly the cranium of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable mentioned.

"It was a whole shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable told Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the man had a melancholy in his cranium that was “perhaps suggestive of the reason for death.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his workplace was criticized by a number of Native Americans, who stated publishing photographs of ancestral remains was offensive to their culture.

Hable said his workplace eliminated the post.

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

Hable mentioned the stays can be turned over to Upper Sioux Group tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch stated in a statement 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 stays.

Goetsch stated the Fb put up “showed a whole 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 cranium was definitely from an ancestor of one of many tribes still living in the space, The New York Instances reported.

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

“There’s probably 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 earlier than that,” Blue stated. “That interval, we don’t know a lot about it.”