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

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

ByThe Associated Press

21 May 2022, 19:10

• 3 min read

REDWOOD FALLS, Minn. -- A partial cranium that was found final summer by two kayakers in Minnesota shall be returned to Native American officers after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years old.

The kayakers discovered the cranium 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 individual case or homicide, Hable turned the cranium over to a medical examiner and finally to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon courting to determine it was probably the skull of a young 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 informed Minnesota Public Radio.

The anthropologist determined the person had a despair in his cranium that was “perhaps suggestive of the cause of dying.”

After the sheriff posted about the discovery on Wednesday, his office was criticized by a number of Native People, who said publishing photos of ancestral remains was offensive to their tradition.

Hable stated his workplace eliminated the publish.

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

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

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

Goetsch stated the Fb publish “showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity” by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the stays as “somewhat piece of history.”

Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State College, said Wednesday that the cranium was undoubtedly from an ancestor of one of the tribes still living in the area, The New York Times reported.

She said the young man would have possible eaten a food plan of crops, 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 individuals at the moment wandering round Minnesota 8,000 years ago, as a result of, like I mentioned, the glaciers have solely retreated a number of hundreds years earlier than that,” Blue said. “That interval, we don’t know a lot about it.”