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

A partial skull from almost 8,000 years ago that was found by two kayakers in a river last summer will be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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

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

Pondering it could be associated to a lacking 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 probably the skull of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable stated.

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

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

After the sheriff posted in regards to the discovery on Wednesday, his workplace was criticized by several Native People, who stated publishing images of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable said his workplace removed the submit.

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

Hable stated the stays will probably be turned over to Upper Sioux Community tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch said in an announcement 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 stated the Fb post “showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “a little piece of history.”

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

She said the younger man would have probably eaten a eating regimen of vegetation, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small area, somewhat than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

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