Nearly 8,000-year-old skull found 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 season can be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Related Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial cranium that was discovered last summer season by two kayakers in Minnesota might be returned to Native American officers after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years previous.

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

Considering it is likely to be related to a missing person case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and finally to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to find out it was probably the skull of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable mentioned.

"It was an entire shock to us that that bone was that old,” Hable told Minnesota Public Radio.

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

After the sheriff posted about the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native Individuals, who said publishing images of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable stated his workplace eliminated the publish.

"We didn’t imply for it to be offensive in any respect,” Hable mentioned.

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

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Resources Specialist Dylan Goetsch stated in a statement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were notified concerning the discovery, which is required by state laws that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.

Goetsch mentioned the Facebook submit “showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “a little piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, mentioned Wednesday that the cranium was positively from an ancestor of one of many tribes still residing in the space, The New York Instances reported.

She said the young man would have probably eaten a weight-reduction plan of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small area, reasonably than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s probably not that many individuals at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, as a result of, like I mentioned, the glaciers have only retreated a number of thousands years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That interval, we don’t know much about it.”