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 final summer will probably be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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

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

Considering it might be associated to a lacking individual case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a medical examiner and finally to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to find out it was probably 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 previous,” Hable advised Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the man had a despair in his cranium that was “maybe suggestive of the reason for dying.”

After the sheriff posted in regards to the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native Individuals, who mentioned publishing images of ancestral remains was offensive to their culture.

Hable said his office removed the post.

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

Hable mentioned the stays might be turned over to Upper Sioux Community tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Resources Specialist Dylan Goetsch mentioned in an announcement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were notified concerning the discovery, which is required by state legal guidelines that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.

Goetsch stated the Facebook put up “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the stays as “a little piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, mentioned Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of many tribes nonetheless residing within the area, The New York Instances reported.

She mentioned the young man would have probably eaten a weight loss plan of crops, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, relatively than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s most likely not that many individuals at that time wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, as a result of, like I stated, the glaciers have only retreated a couple of hundreds years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”