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

A partial skull from practically 8,000 years in the past that was discovered by two kayakers in a river last summer will be returned to Native American officers in Minnesota

ByThe Related Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

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

The kayakers discovered 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 lacking person case or homicide, Hable turned the skull over to a health worker and eventually to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to determine it was doubtless the skull 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 previous,” Hable advised Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the man had a melancholy in his cranium that was “maybe suggestive of the reason for death.”

After the sheriff posted concerning the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by several Native Americans, who mentioned publishing photographs of ancestral remains was offensive to their tradition.

Hable said his office removed the post.

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

Hable mentioned the remains might be turned over to Higher Sioux Community tribal officials.

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

Goetsch stated the Facebook post “showed a whole lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the stays as “a little bit piece of history.”

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

She said the young man would have seemingly eaten a weight loss plan of plants, 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 individuals at the moment wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, because, like I mentioned, the glaciers have only retreated a few thousands years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That interval, we don’t know a lot about it.”