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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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

The kayakers discovered the skull within 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 homicide, Hable turned the skull over to a health worker and finally to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to determine it was doubtless the cranium of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable mentioned.

"It was a complete shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable instructed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the person had a depression in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the reason for demise.”

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

Hable mentioned his office eliminated the publish.

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

Hable stated the remains will be turned over to Higher Sioux Community tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Sources Specialist Dylan Goetsch mentioned in an announcement 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 remains.

Goetsch mentioned the Facebook post “showed a whole lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the stays as “a little bit piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, mentioned Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of the tribes nonetheless living in the area, The New York Instances reported.

She said the younger man would have doubtless eaten a diet of crops, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small area, slightly than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s in all probability 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 hundreds years earlier than that,” Blue stated. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”