Sunday 22 May 2022 03:16 PM Skull of man dating back 8,000 YEARS is found by two kayakers during drought in ... trends now
A pair of kayakers stumbled across the skull of a young man in a drought-stricken portion of the Minnesota River last summer - and officials now say the skull is 8,000 years old.
Local authorities announced the find - made by two unidentified boaters in September, about 110 miles west of Minneapolis near Sacred Heart - last week.
After carbon-dating the skull, cops at Renville County Sheriff’s Office eventually determined the remains belonged to a young man who had lived between 5,500 and 6,000 B.C.
Officials also added that the man died of a severe head wound.
Native American groups are now slamming those lawmen, however, for sharing pictures of the skull on social media, since it most certainly belongs to an ancestor of one of the local tribes in the area.
'It was a complete shock to us that that bone was that old,' Renville County Sheriff Scott Hable told Minnesota Public Radio of the discovery - one of the oldest human remains excavations in recent history - Wednesday.
'I don’t think anybody was anticipating the news to come.'
A pair of kayakers stumbled across the skull of a young man in a drought-stricken portion 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 had lived between 5,500 and 6,000 B.C. Native Americans are slamming lawmen for sharing photos of the skull on social media, since it likely belongs to an ancestor of one of the local tribes
According to the sheriff, the two kayakers made the discovery in a portion of the river that had been dried up by a severe droughts seen in the state that year - which left usually submerged areas atypically exposed.
The brownish, unassuming fragment - found in a portion of the exposed riverbed - then caught the pair's eye, and they reported the discovery to the sheriff.
'Of course, in a kayak, they’re right there, and they happened to spot it,' Hable said of the observant boaters. His office declined to release the pair's names.
Shortly after coming into possession of the skull, thinking it might be related to a missing person case or murder, Hable turned the remains over to the county's medical examiner, and was eventually directed to hand the remains over to the FBI.
A forensic anthropologist from the bureau then used used carbon dating technology to determine the age and other identifying features of the artifact, which officials at that point suspected had historical significance.
After discerning its age, the anthropologist also found that a depression in the skull was 'perhaps suggestive of the cause of death,' police said Wednesday, adding that the skull showed signs of 'blunt force trauma.' It is still not clear how the man died.
Local authorities announced the find - made by two unidentified boaters in September, about 110 miles west of Minneapolis near Sacred Heart - last week. The usually awash area had been drained by severe droughts seen in the region that summer
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