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Uncovered in 1933, experts called the bone fragments that they reconstructed into a skeleton “Browns Valley Man,” which they estimated it to be 9,000 years old, making the skeleton one of the oldest found in North America. The remains were found on a gravel ridge between Lake Traverse and Big Stone Lake.
A farmer in Browns Valley was laying new gravel in his driveway in 1933, when he discovered bone fragments and a flaked blade. Curious, the farmer went to the gravel pit to search for more. After hours of sifting through gravel, he found more bone fragments and flaked blades, enough to make up the skeleton of the adult male, which was given the name Browns Valley Man.
The nearby town of Browns Valley was named for Joseph R. Brown, who came to Minnesota as a youth in 1820 and became a trader, politician, and Indian agent.
Archaeologists classified Browns Valley Man as Paleo-Indian, the earliest Native cultural tradition in the present-day Minnesota region, dating from 9000-5000 BC. The identification of the human remains and associated tools as “Paleo-Indian” reflects the archaeologists’ practice of identifying people in the past by patterns in the material objects they shaped, such as flint tools and pottery. Archaeological cultures use such terminology to classify material objects for the convenience of analysis. Browns Valley was a Paleo-Indian burial site, the only one yet found in Minnesota.
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