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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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in Minnesota shall be returned to Native American officials after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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

Thinking it is perhaps associated to a lacking individual case or murder, Hable turned the skull over to a health worker and ultimately to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to find out it was seemingly the cranium of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable said.

"It was a whole shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable told Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the man had a depression in his cranium that was “perhaps suggestive of the cause of death.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his workplace was criticized by a number of Native Individuals, who mentioned publishing photos of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable said his workplace removed the put up.

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

Hable mentioned the remains will probably be turned over to Higher Sioux Neighborhood tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch said in a press release 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 stated the Fb post “confirmed a whole 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, mentioned Wednesday that the cranium was positively from an ancestor of one of the tribes still living within the area, The New York Instances reported.

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

“There’s in all probability not that many individuals at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I said, the glaciers have solely retreated a couple of 1000's years before that,” Blue said. “That interval, we don’t know a lot about it.”