Kayakers Found A Human Skull That Turned Out To Be 8,000 Years Old
What was supposed to be a simple day of kayaking for two Minnesota residents turned into more than they bargained for when they happened upon ...
Read moreKayakers Found A Human Skull That Turned Out To Be 8,000 Years Old
Posted — UpdatedWhat was supposed to be a simple day of kayaking for two Minnesota residents turned into more than they bargained for when they happened upon what turned out to be an 8,000-year-old human skull.
The kayakers discovered a large fragment of a skull in September along the Minnesota River, amid a drought. They turned the skull over to the Renville County sheriff’s office, which thought it could have been a clue in a missing persons case. They sent it to the medical examiner and then an FBI forensic anthropologist, who couldn’t determine the identity and instead made a startling discovery.
The news station tweeted about the finding, along with an image of the skull fragment, on May 18:
“There’s probably not that many people at that time wandering around Minnesota 8,000 years ago, because, like I said, the glaciers have only retreated a few thousand years before that,” Blue said. “That period, we don’t know much about it.”
“There just weren’t as many people on the landscape, and it’s older, so we just don’t find as much evidence,” Buhta told the Post.
What little evidence does emerge often isn’t analyzed in a lab because archaeologists are trying to respect the wishes of local Native Americans concerning their ancestors’ remains — and comply with the law.
After the sheriff’s office posted photos of the skull fragment on social media, several Native American groups expressed alarm that they had not been notified first and were dismayed with how the photos were shared. The post was taken down.
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