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

A partial skull from nearly 8,000 years ago that was found by two kayakers in a river final summer season will probably be returned to Native American officers in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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Minnesota will likely be returned to Native American officials after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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.

Considering 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, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to determine it was possible the skull of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable stated.

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

The anthropologist determined the man had a melancholy in his cranium that was “maybe suggestive of the cause of dying.”

After the sheriff posted in regards to the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by a number of Native Americans, who stated publishing photographs of ancestral remains was offensive to their culture.

Hable stated his workplace removed the post.

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

Hable mentioned the stays will be turned over to Higher Sioux Neighborhood tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch stated in an announcement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were notified concerning the discovery, which is required by state laws that govern the care and repatriation of Native American stays.

Goetsch mentioned the Fb publish “confirmed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “a little 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 within the space, The New York Instances reported.

She said the younger man would have probably eaten a diet of crops, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, quite 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 stated, the glaciers have solely retreated a number of 1000's years before that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”