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

A partial cranium from practically 8,000 years in the past that was discovered by two kayakers in a river final summer time can be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Related Press

21 Might 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial cranium that was found last summer by two kayakers in Minnesota might be returned to Native American officials after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years previous.

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

Pondering it could be related to a missing individual case or homicide, Hable turned the skull over to a medical examiner and finally to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to determine it was possible the cranium of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable mentioned.

"It was an entire shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable told Minnesota Public Radio.

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

After the sheriff posted about the discovery on Wednesday, his workplace was criticized by a number of Native Americans, who stated publishing pictures of ancestral stays was offensive to their culture.

Hable mentioned his workplace removed the publish.

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

Hable stated the stays might be turned over to Upper Sioux Neighborhood tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Sources Specialist Dylan Goetsch stated in a statement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist had been notified about the discovery, which is required by state laws that govern the care and repatriation of Native American stays.

Goetsch said the Facebook put up “confirmed a whole lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “a bit of piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, stated Wednesday that the cranium was definitely from an ancestor of one of many tribes nonetheless residing in the area, The New York Occasions reported.

She said the young man would have likely eaten a diet of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small area, moderately than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s probably not that many people at that time wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years ago, because, like I stated, the glaciers have only retreated a number of 1000's years earlier than that,” Blue mentioned. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”