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

A partial skull from almost 8,000 years ago that was found by two kayakers in a river last summer season will likely be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Related Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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

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

Pondering it is perhaps associated to a lacking person case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a medical examiner and ultimately to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to find out it was possible the skull 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 old,” Hable advised Minnesota Public Radio.

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

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

Hable said his workplace eliminated the submit.

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

Hable mentioned the remains might be turned over to Higher Sioux Community tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch said in an announcement 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 Fb publish “showed a whole lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “a bit piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, stated Wednesday that the cranium was definitely from an ancestor of one of many tribes still residing in the area, The New York Times reported.

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

“There’s in all probability not that many individuals at the moment wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years ago, as a result of, like I said, the glaciers have solely retreated just a few hundreds years earlier than that,” Blue mentioned. “That interval, we don’t know much about it.”