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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial cranium that was found final summer season by two kayakers in Minnesota will likely be returned to Native American officials after investigations decided it was about 8,000 years outdated.

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

Pondering it may be associated to a lacking particular person case or homicide, Hable turned the cranium over to a health worker and eventually to the FBI, the place a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to determine it was seemingly the cranium 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"It was a whole shock to us that that bone was that outdated,” Hable advised Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist decided the man had a despair in his cranium that was “perhaps suggestive of the cause of death.”

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

Hable said his office removed the publish.

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

Hable mentioned the remains will probably be turned over to Upper Sioux Neighborhood tribal officers.

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

Goetsch mentioned the Fb post “confirmed a whole lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the person a Native American and referring to the stays as “a little piece of historical past.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, stated Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of the tribes still residing within the space, The New York Occasions reported.

She said the young man would have likely eaten a weight-reduction plan of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small area, relatively than following mammals and bison on their migrations.

“There’s most likely not that many individuals at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years in the past, as a result of, like I said, the glaciers have solely retreated a couple of hundreds years before that,” Blue stated. “That period, we don’t know a lot about it.”