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

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

ByThe Related Press

21 Might 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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in Minnesota might be returned to Native American officials after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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

Thinking it is perhaps associated to a lacking particular person case or murder, Hable turned the skull over to a medical expert and ultimately to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon dating to determine it was doubtless the cranium of a younger 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 informed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the man had a depression in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the reason for loss of life.”

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

Hable mentioned his office eliminated the post.

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

Hable said the remains can be turned over to Upper Sioux Neighborhood tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch said in a press release 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 call the individual a Native American and referring to the remains as “a little piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, mentioned Wednesday that the skull was positively from an ancestor of one of many tribes still dwelling in the space, The New York Times reported.

She stated the young man would have seemingly eaten a weight-reduction plan of vegetation, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, relatively than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s in all probability not that many individuals at that time wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, as a result of, like I said, the glaciers have only retreated just a few hundreds years before that,” Blue mentioned. “That interval, we don’t know a lot about it.”