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

A partial skull from nearly 8,000 years in the past that was discovered by two kayakers in a river last summer season can be returned to Native American officers in Minnesota

ByThe Related Press

21 Might 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial cranium that was discovered final summer season by two kayakers in Minnesota can be returned to Native American officers 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.

Thinking it is likely to be associated to a lacking individual case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and ultimately to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon dating to find out it was doubtless the skull of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable said.

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

The anthropologist decided the man had a depression in his skull that was “maybe suggestive of the cause of 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 pictures of ancestral remains was offensive to their tradition.

Hable said his office eliminated the submit.

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

Hable said the remains will likely be turned over to Upper Sioux Group tribal officers.

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

Goetsch stated the Fb put up “confirmed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the individual a Native American and referring to the stays as “a bit of 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 the tribes nonetheless residing within the space, The New York Occasions reported.

She mentioned the younger man would have seemingly eaten a weight loss program of vegetation, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, slightly than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s most likely not that many individuals at the moment wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I mentioned, the glaciers have only retreated just a few 1000's years before that,” Blue mentioned. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”