
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993                   TAG: 9310030019
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

8,000-YEAR-OLD MAN'S BONES FOUND IN CAVE

The bones of a man who died nearly 8,000 years ago in a Colorado mountain cave have been identified by researchers.

The 35- to 40-year-old man appears to have been a strong climber and spelunker. His remains were found in a cave at more than 10,000 feet above sea level and about 1,000 feet from the cave entrance. Getting there would have required a good deal of wriggling, climbing and crawling though cold, muddy passages.

The research team also found smudge marks along the cave walls and charcoal on the clay floor - evidence that the man carried a torch in his explorations.

"He was a really good caver," said Patty Jo Watson, lead archaeologist on the team that studied the remains and a professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. "Once again, we are realizing that ancient people were a lot smarter and stronger than many people previously thought," Watson said in a statment.

The remains are among the oldest ever found in North America. The man is almost twice as old as the the "Ice Man," the frozen corpse found in Europe's southern Alps in 1991.

The Colorado man was 5 feet 5 inches tall; his bones gave no sign of poor health or nutritional problems. The bones were scattered and chewed on, probably by porcupines and pack rats living in the cave, the researchers said. Preliminary results of a genetic scan showed similarities to Amerindian populations in the regions south of Canada.

The bones were found in 1988 in a cave on federal land; the exact location of the cave was not revealed to protect it for further research. The results of the 15-member team's work were announced yesterday in Jackson, Wyo., at the First Biennial Rocky Mountain Anthropology Conference.

No one is certain why the man died in such a remote and lonely place. No funerary artifacts were found with the remains, so researchers say death was probably unexpected. "We think he might have lost his way and run out of light," Hildebolt said.

However, Kenny Frost, the Native American cultural heritage representative for the Southern Ute Indian tribe, suggested that the man had explored the cave thoroughly in the past and wished to die there: "He knew that his time was coming, and went into the cave for the last time."

by CNB