Nearly 8,000-year-old cranium found 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 time might be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial cranium that was discovered final summer by two kayakers in Minnesota might be returned to Native American officers after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years previous.

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

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

"It was a complete shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable told Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the man had a depression in his cranium that was “perhaps suggestive of the reason for dying.”

After the sheriff posted about the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native Individuals, who said publishing pictures of ancestral remains was offensive to their tradition.

Hable mentioned his workplace eliminated the post.

"We didn’t imply for it to be offensive in any respect,” Hable stated.

Hable said the stays shall be turned over to Higher Sioux Group tribal officials.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Resources Specialist Dylan Goetsch mentioned in a statement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist have been notified concerning the discovery, which is required by state legal guidelines that govern the care and repatriation of Native American stays.

Goetsch stated the Facebook put up “showed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “somewhat piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, stated Wednesday that the cranium was positively from an ancestor of one of the tribes nonetheless residing in the area, The New York Instances reported.

She mentioned the younger man would have seemingly eaten a weight loss plan of crops, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small area, moderately than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s probably not that many individuals at that time wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years ago, as a result of, like I stated, the glaciers have solely retreated a number of thousands years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That interval, we don’t know much about it.”