And now:LISN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Subject: Yukon: mummified body of ancient hunter found
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 08:04:25 -0400
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tuesday, August 24, 1999
Ancient mummified hunter found in B.C.
glacier
Chris Wattie and Adam Killick
National Post, with files from Nadine Pedersen, The Whitehorse Star
The mummified body of an ancient hunter and his kill have been
discovered
in a remote British
Columbia glacier, an unprecedented archaeological find that sources say
could be hundreds, or even
thousands, of years old.
A group of hikers stumbled across the partially preserved body of a
hunter
dressed in furs and
wearing a cedar-woven cap in the remote wilderness of B.C.'s
Tatshenshini
Park, just south of the
border with the Yukon.
Warren Ward, one of the discoverers, said the sight "gave me a chill up
my
spine."
According to a Yukon government source, the man was half-frozen into the
ice and "from the pelvis
down, he appears well-preserved." Nearby were the remains of a moose,
fuelling speculation that
the hunter was at a kill site "when something went horribly wrong."
The man's body had intact skin and muscle tissue and was surrounded by
clothing and tools.
Sources say they are between 200 and several thousand years old, but an
exact age will have to wait
for radio-carbon dating.
Greg Hare, a government archaeologist, would not reveal anything about
the
find until a press
conference scheduled for today in Haines Junction, Yukon.
Digs several hundred kilometres to the west have revealed evidence of
human
habitation dating back
10,000 years, and at Kusawa Lake less than 200 kilometres from the site,
similar tools were found
to be at least 6,000 years old.
"He could be 150 years old, he could be 5,000 years old," the source
said.
Dr. Owen Beattie, a
professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, was among the
scientists who were called to
the site to investigate.
Mr. Ward, 52, a high school teacher from Nelson, B.C., discovered the
body
while on a hunting trip
in the remote wilderness park.
"We were walking around the edge of a smallish glacier and I looked down
and saw a stick," he
said. "And this was an area where there was no -- I mean no wood. So I
picked it up and saw right
away it was carved with native symbols: I knew it was something pretty
old
right away."
Mr. Ward said he and his companions followed a trail of artifacts along
the
glacier's edge, picking up
a small stone knife and spear-thrower for about 100 metres.
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
