While paddling their kayak down a river in Minnesota, a group of friends stumbled upon a human skull. According to local authorities, this skull would be more than 8000 years old, a little-known period in America.
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Credit: ducken99 / Pixabay
As related The Guardianin June 2021, two friends who were out for a walk were sailing with their kayak when they made a macabre discovery: a human skull found in a dry place in the Minnesota River.
Developing several tracks from the most eccentric to the most disturbing, the two friends warned the local authorities. Sheriff Scott Hable of Renville County was in charge of the case and decided to entrust the skull and bones to a medical examiner for more expertise.
Eventually, the skull was turned over to the FBI by a forensic anthropologist who would be better able to date the bones with carbon-14.
A Native American skull returned to the native people
Minnesota river. Credit: andercee / Wikipedia
The first analyzes identified the skull as that of a young man who probably lived in the region at a time that is still too little known, between 5500 and 6000 years BC.
It was therefore quickly established that the man must probably belong to the Native American community. Minnesota is mainly populated by the Sioux tribe, so the young man might be the ancestor of one of the communities in the state.
As stipulated in the US federal law of 1990, The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, unearthed Native American cultural property must be “ returned to the native peoples “. A repatriation confirmed by Sheriff Hable to the Upper Sioux people.
