8,000-year-old skull found in Minnesota River

The skull of a young man who lived 8,000 years ago was found in the Minnesota River.

Local authorities announced the shocking date earlier this week, after two kayakers discovered bone last summer during a drought.

The kayakers turned the skull over to police because they thought it could be tied to a missing person case or an unsolved crime. Local police turned it over to the FBI.

The feds used carbon dating and quickly realized that the skull was certainly not tied to any crime from the past 7,000 years. An anthropologist at the bureau noticed a dent in the skull and said that was “perhaps suggestive of the cause of death.”

Undated image provided by the Renville County Sheriff’s Office, part of a skull, believed to be about 8,000 years old, found in the Minnesota River in September 2021.

“It was a complete shock to us that that bone was that old,” Renville County Sheriff Scott Hable told MPR News.

Hable’s office posted about the news on Facebook, but deleted the post after local Native American communities said it was offensive.

“We didn’t mean for it to be offensive whatsoever,” Hable told MPR.

Archaeologists have said the Minnesota area was likely sparsely populated around 8,000 years ago.

With News Wire Services