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

A partial cranium from nearly 8,000 years ago that was found by two kayakers in a river final summer season shall be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Related Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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

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

Thinking it might be associated to a missing person case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a medical examiner and eventually to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon dating to determine it was possible the skull of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable stated.

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

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

After the sheriff posted in regards to the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native Americans, who stated publishing photos of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable mentioned his office removed the put up.

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

Hable stated the remains might be turned over to Upper Sioux Group tribal officials.

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

Goetsch stated the Facebook post “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “a bit of piece of history.”

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

She said the younger man would have doubtless eaten a weight loss program of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, fairly than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

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