Almost 8,000-year-old skull present 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 time shall be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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

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

Thinking it is likely to be related to a missing individual case or homicide, Hable turned the skull over to a health worker and ultimately to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to determine it was seemingly the cranium of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable stated.

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

The anthropologist determined the man had a despair in his skull that was “maybe suggestive of the cause of dying.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his workplace was criticized by several Native Individuals, who stated publishing pictures of ancestral remains was offensive to their tradition.

Hable said his office removed the put up.

"We didn’t imply for it to be offensive whatsoever,” Hable mentioned.

Hable stated the stays will likely be turned over to Upper Sioux Group tribal officers.

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

Goetsch stated the Fb publish “confirmed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the stays as “just a little piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, said Wednesday that the cranium was definitely from an ancestor of one of many tribes still dwelling in the space, The New York Times reported.

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

“There’s in all probability not that many people at the moment wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years ago, because, like I said, the glaciers have solely retreated just a few hundreds years before that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”