A partial skull was discovered by kayakers in Minnesota last summer, and will be given to Native American officials.
The skull was found by kayakers in the Minnesota River, about 180 km west of Minneapolis.
Hable shared the skull with a medical examiner and then to the FBI, where a forensic anthropologist used carbon dating to determine it was the skull of a young man who lived in that area between 5500 and 6000 BC
Hable told Minnesota Public Radio that it was a complete shock that the bone was that old.
The anthropologist found a depression in the man's skull that may have been related to his death.
Several Native Americans criticized the sheriff's office for publishing photos of ancestral remains, saying it was offensive to their culture.
The post was removed by Hable's office.
Hable said that they didn't mean for it to be offensive.
The remains will be turned over to tribal officials.
The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council's cultural resources specialist said in a statement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were notified about the discovery, which is required by state laws that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.
Goetsch said the Facebook post showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity by failing to call the individual a Native American and referring to the remains as a little piece of history.
The New York Times reported that Kathleen Blue, an anthropology professor at Minnesota State University, said that the skull was from a tribe still living in the area.
She said the young man would have eaten a diet of plants, deer, fish, turtles and freshwater mussels in a small region rather than following mammals and bison on their migrations.
The glaciers have retreated a few thousands years before that, so there probably wasn't a lot of people wandering around around that time.
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