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

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

ByThe Related Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

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Minnesota will probably be returned to Native American officers after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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

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

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

The anthropologist determined the man had a depression in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the reason for death.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by a number of Native Individuals, who mentioned publishing photos of ancestral stays was offensive to their tradition.

Hable stated his office removed the post.

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

Hable stated the remains can be turned over to Upper Sioux Neighborhood tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch said in a statement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist had been notified in regards to the discovery, which is required by state legal guidelines that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.

Goetsch stated the Fb publish “confirmed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “a bit piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, said Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of the tribes still residing within the space, The New York Occasions reported.

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

“There’s most likely not that many people at the moment wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I said, the glaciers have only retreated a few hundreds years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”