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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial skull that was found final summer season by two kayakers in Minnesota will likely be returned to Native American officers after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years previous.

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

Considering it is perhaps associated to a lacking individual case or murder, Hable turned the skull over to a medical expert and eventually to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to find out it was probably the cranium of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable stated.

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

The anthropologist decided the person had a depression in his skull that was “maybe suggestive of the cause of death.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by a number of Native Individuals, who said publishing photos of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable said his office removed the publish.

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

Hable said the stays will be turned over to Upper Sioux Community tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Resources Specialist Dylan Goetsch said in a press release that neither the council nor the state archaeologist had been notified concerning the discovery, which is required by state legal guidelines that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.

Goetsch said the Fb publish “showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “just a little piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, mentioned Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of the tribes still residing within the area, The New York Instances reported.

She stated the younger man would have probably eaten a diet of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, reasonably than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s probably not that many individuals at the moment wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, as a result of, like I stated, the glaciers have only retreated just a few thousands years earlier than that,” Blue mentioned. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”