Almost 8,000-year-old cranium present in Minnesota River

A partial cranium from practically 8,000 years ago that was found by two kayakers in a river last summer will be returned to Native American officials in Minnesota

ByThe Associated Press

21 Might 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial skull that was discovered last summer time by two kayakers in Minnesota will be returned to Native American officers after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years old.

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

Pondering it may be related to a missing person case or murder, Hable turned the skull over to a health worker and eventually to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon relationship to find out it was possible the cranium of a younger 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"It was an entire shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable informed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the man had a melancholy in his skull that was “maybe suggestive of the reason for dying.”

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

Hable stated his office removed the submit.

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

Hable said the remains can be turned over to Upper Sioux Community tribal officers.

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

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

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, said Wednesday that the cranium was definitely from an ancestor of one of the tribes nonetheless living in the space, The New York Occasions reported.

She stated the young man would have probably eaten a food regimen of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region, slightly than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s in all probability not that many individuals at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I stated, the glaciers have solely retreated a number of thousands years before that,” Blue stated. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”