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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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

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

Thinking it might be associated to a missing person case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and ultimately to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to find out it was doubtless the cranium of a younger 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"It was a whole shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable advised Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the man had a despair in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the cause of dying.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by a number of Native People, who said publishing photographs of ancestral remains was offensive to their tradition.

Hable mentioned his workplace eliminated the post.

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

Hable stated the stays will be turned over to Higher Sioux Neighborhood tribal officials.

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

Goetsch said the Fb publish “confirmed a whole lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the individual a Native American and referring to the remains as “a little bit piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, said Wednesday that the skull was undoubtedly from an ancestor of one of the tribes nonetheless living within the space, The New York Instances reported.

She stated the younger man would have doubtless eaten a diet of crops, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small area, reasonably 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 ago, 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 a lot about it.”