Two kayakers stumbled across the skull of a young man in a drought-stricken stretch of the Minnesota River last summer – and officials now say the skull is 8,000 years old.
Local authorities announced the find, made in September by two unidentified boaters about 110 miles west of Minneapolis near Sacred Heart, last week.
After carbon dating the skull, Renville County Sheriff’s Department police officers eventually determined that the remains belonged to a young man who lived between 5,500 and 6,000 B.C. had lived
Officials added that the man died from a serious head injury.
However, Native American groups are now lashing out at these lawyers for sharing images of the skull on social media, as it most likely belongs to an ancestor of one of the local tribes in the area.
“It was a complete shock to us that this bone was so old,” Renville County Sheriff Scott Hable told Minnesota Public Radio Wednesday of the discovery — one of the oldest excavations of human remains in recent history.
“I don’t think anyone expected the news to come.”
Two kayakers stumbled across the skull of a young man in a drought-stricken stretch of the Minnesota River last summer – and officials now say the skull is 8,000 years old
Feds, who carbon dated the skull, said the remains belonged to a young man who died between 5,500 and 6,000 BC
According to the sheriff, the two kayakers made the discovery in a portion of the river that had dried up from a severe drought seen in the state this year — atypically exposing normally submerged areas.
The brownish, nondescript fragment found in part of the exposed riverbed then caught the couple’s attention, and they reported the discovery to the sheriff.
“Of course they’re right there in a kayak, and they accidentally spotted it,” Hable said of the observant boaters. His office declined to release the couple’s names.
Shortly after Hable came into possession of the skull, believing it could be a missing person case or homicide, Hable turned the remains over to the county coroner and was eventually ordered to turn the remains over to the FBI.
A forensic anthropologist with the bureau then used the carbon dating technology used to determine the artifact’s age and other identifying features, which officials suspected at the time had historical significance.
After establishing its age, the anthropologist also noted that an indentation in the skull “possibly suggests the cause of death,” police said Wednesday, adding that the skull showed signs of “blunt force trauma.” How the man died is still unclear.
Local authorities announced the find, made in September by two unidentified boaters about 110 miles west of Minneapolis near Sacred Heart, last week. The normally flooded area had been drained by severe droughts seen in the region this summer
“To say we were brought back is an understatement,” Hable told the Washington Post of Thursday’s reveal of the relic’s origins. “None of us were prepared for this.”
The sheriff added that the man — for whom no exact age range was given — likely traversed parts of what is now Minnesota during the Archaic Period, a time before subsistence farming began when Native American hunter-gatherers roamed the country.
An analysis by the South Dakota Archeology Laboratory at Augustana University found that the man subsisted primarily on fish, plants, deer, fish, turtles, and freshwater clams, which are prevalent in the region.
Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, said Wednesday the man likely lived in the region that is now Minnesota for years, subsisting on those foods rather than following mammals and bison that migrate for miles.
“Probably not that many people migrated through Minnesota at this time 8,000 years ago because, as I said, the glaciers only retreated a few thousand years ago,” Blue told the New York Times on Wednesday. “This time, we don’t know much about it.”
The earliest known people in the area lived about 13,000 years ago, Austin Buhta, an archaeologist at Augustana University, told the Washington Post.
However, the river man lived in a later period when nomads roamed about in small groups, both hunting and foraging.
“As far as we can tell, there was no agriculture back then,” Buhta told the newspaper. He added that some of these archaic Americans hunted with small spears and wooden throwing weapons called “atlatls.”
The man found in the river lived at a time when nomads roamed in small groups, hunting and foraging for food. Experts said the man – who was found with a serious head wound that likely led to his death – ate mostly fish, deer and plants
Researchers have had little success learning about the Archaic Period — one of the earliest stages of the culture — Buhta said, especially compared to later humans burying their dead.
“There just weren’t that many people on the landscape,” he said, “and it’s older, so we just don’t find that much evidence.”
On Wednesday, Hable’s office eagerly shared the department and office’s findings with the public, sharing a picture of the skull on the department’s Facebook with the caption “a little piece of history.”
However, the post angered local Native American groups, who said the post showed “a complete lack of cultural sensitivity.”
They cited the Office’s failure to identify the person as Native American in the Post and further expressed irritation at the “little bit of history” comment.
Dylan Goetsch, a cultural resources specialist with Minnesota’s Indian Affairs Council, said in a statement Thursday that it was “unacceptable and offensive” for tribes to learn about the skull through Facebook, citing that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were made aware of the discovery – as required by state law.
He added that laws governing the care and repatriation of Aboriginal remains have been in effect for more than three decades, and that the council and state archaeologist regularly work with other law enforcement officials when remains are discovered.
The backlash drew a quick response from Hable’s department, which promptly removed the post and has since agreed to turn over the remains to the Upper Sioux community — made up of several hundred people and more than a thousand acres of land home to the Indigenous people of Dakota.
“We didn’t want it to be offensive,” Hable said.
“Because there is a possibility that the bones belong to someone of Native American descent, we will simply honor their request.”