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

A partial skull from nearly 8,000 years in the past that was discovered by two kayakers in a river final summer season might be returned to Native American officers in Minnesota

ByThe Related 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 shall be returned to Native American officials after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years previous.

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

Pondering it might be associated to a missing particular person case or murder, Hable turned the skull over to a medical examiner and eventually to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon dating to find out it was probably 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 decided the man had a melancholy in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the reason for demise.”

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

Hable stated his workplace eliminated the put up.

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

Hable stated the stays might be turned over to Higher Sioux Group tribal officers.

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

Goetsch mentioned the Fb post “showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “a little piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, mentioned Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of many tribes still living within the area, The New York Occasions reported.

She stated the younger man would have seemingly eaten a weight-reduction plan of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, 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 ago, because, like I stated, the glaciers have solely retreated a number of hundreds years before that,” Blue mentioned. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”