When a pair of kayaks discovered a skull fragment near the Minnesota River in 2021, local authorities thought they might have new clues to a missing person case. But a forensic examination revealed something much more surprising: The bone was 8,000 years old.
Kayakers have discovered not the remains of a modern-day murder victim, but clues to Native American life during the Archaic period, which spanned some 8,000 to 1,000 years ago. Examination of the skull revealed that it belonged to a man who lived between 5,500 BC and 6,000 BC
“To say we’ve been brought back is an overstatement,” Renville County Sheriff Scott Hable told the Washington Post. “None of us were prepared for that.”
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The sheriff’s office initially posted a photo of the skull fragment on social media, but removed the photo after objections from the Minnesota Council of Indian Affairs. The group objected to both the fact that the state board and archaeologists were not aware of the discovery in advance, as required by state law, and that the remains were displayed online, MPR News reported. Live Science will not reproduce the photograph here. The remainder will be turned over to Upper Sioux Community tribal officials, according to MPR News.
Kayakers discovered the skull in September 2021 near the city of Sacred Heart in southwestern Minnesota. According to New York TimesThe site where the bones were found would normally be underwater, but a severe drought caused the river’s water levels to drop.
The forensic examination includes a chemical analysis of the amount and type carbon found in the skull. The decay of an isotope, or variant, of carbon called carbon-14 revealed the age of the skull. The balance of other isotopes reveals an individual’s diet. This analysis shows that the man it belonged to ate a diet of fish, corn, pearl millet or sorghum. Kathleen Blue, professor and chair of anthropology at Minnesota State University, told the New York Times little is known about how long the man lived in the area, but he probably made his living locally. , living on a diet of plants, deer, turtles, fish and mussels.
There was evidence of blunt force trauma on the skull fragment, but the trauma would not kill the man, Blue said. The bones showed signs of growing back and healing, indicating that the man had survived any damage caused.
Few human remains from this period have been found in the upper Midwest. In the 1930s, road construction unearthed the skull and partial skeleton of a Native American teenage girl, known today as Minnesota woman, who is also believed to be between 8,000 and 10,000 years old. The girl found with a dagger and a conch shell is believed to have come from the Gulf of Mexico, suggesting a primitive trading network among Native American peoples.
Originally published on Live Science.
https://www.livescience.com/8000-year-old-skull-minnesota Kayakers find 8,000-year-old human skull in Minnesota