World

Body Of Ancient Man Found

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

August 25, 1999 / 4:25 PM EDT / CBS

Three teachers hunting for sheep in a remote corner of northwestern British Columbia have found the well-preserved remains of an ancient man, scientists and local leaders say.

Discovered in a melting glacier, CBS News Correspondent Bob Schieffer reports the man is believed to have been a hunter. His nicely woven hat, spear and the body of a moose were found beside him; all of it was quickly moved to cold storage.

Archaeologists and elders from the territory where the body was found announced the discovery Tuesday at a news conference. Scientists hesitated to say how old they thought the remains were.

"It's so hard to pin down. I don't want to speculate," said Al Mackie, an archaeologist with British Columbia's government.

Tribal leaders speculated the man was crossing a glacier when disaster struck. Somehow he died, his body trapped in an ice field.

AP
The man's nicely woven hat, spear and the body of a moose were found beside him.

Scientists say the find may rank with the discovery of the well-preserved body of a 5,000-year-old hunter found in an Alpine glacier eight years ago. German hikers found that body preserved in a glacier at 10,000 feet, along with an ax and knife, suggesting he had trekked to that height in search of game.

The teachers said they discovered the Canadian remains frozen in ice in Tatshenshini Park, just south of the Yukon-British Columbia border. They also found some belongings, believed to be a walking stick and weapons.

"The elders have indicated that we should use this situation, what appears to be an ancient tragedy, to learn more about this person, when he lived, and how his clothes and tools were made and how he died," Chief Bob Charlie of the Champagne-Aishihik First Nation said.

That suggests this find won't spark the kind of controversy that enveloped a 1996 discovery of a skeleton near Kennewick, Wash., thought by scientists to be more than 9,000 years old. The region's American Indian tribes contend the bones are those of an ancestor and should be turned over to them for burial, while scientists have sued for the right to study the so-called Kennewick Man.

One of the teachers, Bill Hanlon of Sparwood, British Columbia, said they were walking along rocks next to an ice patch when they saw odd-shaped pieces of wood that had been carved.

"We started saying, 'This looks pretty neat'," Hanlon said. One of the men then spotted a patch of fur in the ice. Hanlon said the fur turned out to be either a pack or a coat from which they pulled ot a tool.

Then they saw the body.

"We noticed a hip bone [protruding from the ice]," he said. The bone had been decomposing, so it felt rubbery and spongy; they then spotted the lower part of the body in the ice. "The lower torso, we could tell, was in the ice and there was flesh on that."

While they could see the lower part of the body, he said, they didn't spot the head or upper torso. The three hunters picked up a few artifacts, including pieces of wood, hiked back to their truck and later informed authorities.

Once scientists finish their study of the body, they promised to bury it in the ice where they found it.