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

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

ByThe Related Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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

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

Pondering it might be related to a missing person case or homicide, Hable turned the skull over to a medical expert and eventually to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to find out it was probably the cranium of a young man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable said.

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

The anthropologist decided the person had a melancholy in his cranium 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 People, who stated publishing photos of ancestral remains was offensive to their tradition.

Hable stated his workplace eliminated the put up.

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

Hable mentioned the stays will be turned over to Higher Sioux Community tribal officers.

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

Goetsch stated the Facebook publish “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “a bit piece of history.”

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

She stated the young man would have doubtless eaten a eating regimen of crops, 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 individuals at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years ago, as a result of, like I mentioned, the glaciers have only retreated a few thousands years before that,” Blue mentioned. “That interval, we don’t know much about it.”