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

A partial skull from nearly 8,000 years ago that was discovered by two kayakers in a river last summer will be returned to Native American officers in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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will probably be returned to Native American officers after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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

Pondering it may be associated to a missing person case or homicide, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and eventually to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to find out it was likely 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"It was a complete shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable instructed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the person had a melancholy in his cranium that was “maybe suggestive of the cause of dying.”

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

Hable stated his office eliminated the submit.

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

Hable mentioned the remains shall be turned over to Higher Sioux Community tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Sources Specialist Dylan Goetsch mentioned in a press release that neither the council nor the state archaeologist had been notified concerning the discovery, which is required by state legal guidelines that govern the care and repatriation of Native American stays.

Goetsch mentioned the Fb put up “confirmed a whole lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the remains as “a bit of piece of history.”

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

She mentioned the younger man would have possible eaten a food regimen of vegetation, 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 individuals at the moment wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, as a result of, like I stated, the glaciers have only retreated a few thousands years before that,” Blue stated. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”