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

A partial cranium from practically 8,000 years in the past that was found by two kayakers in a river last summer can be returned to Native American officers in Minnesota

ByThe Related Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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in Minnesota will likely be returned to Native American officers after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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

Pondering it could be related to a missing particular person case or homicide, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and eventually to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to find out it was seemingly the skull of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable mentioned.

"It was a whole shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable told Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the person had a despair in his skull that was “maybe suggestive of the reason for demise.”

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

Hable stated his workplace eliminated the submit.

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

Hable said the stays will likely be turned over to Higher Sioux Group tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Sources Specialist Dylan Goetsch mentioned in a statement 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 mentioned the Facebook post “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the individual a Native American and referring to the remains as “just a little piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, stated Wednesday that the cranium was positively from an ancestor of one of the tribes nonetheless residing within the space, The New York Times reported.

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

“There’s most likely not that many individuals at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, as a result of, like I mentioned, the glaciers have solely retreated a couple of 1000's years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”