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

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

ByThe Related Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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

The kayakers discovered the skull in 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 lacking individual case or murder, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and ultimately to the FBI, where 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 said.

"It was an entire shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable instructed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the man had a depression in his skull that was “maybe suggestive of the cause of demise.”

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

Hable mentioned his workplace removed the publish.

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

Hable said the remains will be turned over to Upper Sioux Group tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Resources Specialist Dylan Goetsch said in an announcement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were notified about the discovery, which is required by state legal guidelines that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.

Goetsch stated the Facebook post “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the remains as “somewhat piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, said Wednesday that the cranium was undoubtedly from an ancestor of one of many tribes nonetheless dwelling within the area, The New York Instances reported.

She stated the younger man would have doubtless eaten a food regimen of crops, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small area, rather than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s in all probability 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 just a few thousands years before that,” Blue mentioned. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”