Nearly 8,000-year-old cranium present in Minnesota River

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 Might 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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in Minnesota will be returned to Native American officials after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years outdated.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

Considering it is perhaps related to a missing individual case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and eventually to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to determine it was possible the skull of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable said.

"It was a whole shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable advised Minnesota Public Radio.

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

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

Hable stated his workplace removed the submit.

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

Hable mentioned the remains will be turned over to Higher Sioux Group tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Sources Specialist Dylan Goetsch stated in a press release that neither the council nor the state archaeologist have been notified about the discovery, which is required by state laws 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 call the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “slightly piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, mentioned Wednesday that the cranium was undoubtedly from an ancestor of one of many tribes still dwelling in the area, The New York Times reported.

She mentioned the young man would have seemingly eaten a diet of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, somewhat than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s probably not that many people at the moment wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I stated, the glaciers have solely retreated a couple of 1000's years earlier than that,” Blue stated. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”