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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 Could 2022, 19:10

• 3 min learn

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial skull that was discovered last 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 skull within the drought-depleted Minnesota River about 110 miles (180 kilometers) west of Minneapolis, Renville County Sheriff Scott Hable stated.

Considering it could be related to a missing individual case or homicide, Hable turned the cranium over to a medical expert and eventually to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon dating to find out it was seemingly the skull of a younger man who lived between 5500 and 6000 B.C., Hable mentioned.

"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 despair in his skull that was “perhaps suggestive of the cause of death.”

After the sheriff posted in regards to the discovery on Wednesday, his workplace was criticized by several Native Americans, who mentioned publishing images of ancestral stays was offensive to their culture.

Hable mentioned his office removed the post.

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

Hable stated the remains will be turned over to Higher Sioux Group tribal officers.

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Cultural Assets Specialist Dylan Goetsch said in an announcement 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 mentioned the Facebook publish “confirmed an entire lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to name the person a Native American and referring to the remains as “somewhat piece of history.”

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

She stated the young man would have seemingly eaten a food regimen of vegetation, 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 people at the moment wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I said, the glaciers have only retreated a few 1000's years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That interval, we don’t know much about it.”