Leaving it open, rather than forcing a comfortable but unsupported answer, is the right response — and it is the response that keeps the man himself most present as a real person rather than reducing him to a collection of skeletal measurements and mitochondrial sequences.

The Man, Not The Specimen

He was approximately forty years old.

He was physically compact, dense with muscle, built for sustained physical work.

His body carried the accumulated record of a life lived hard at altitude — robust bones, developed muscle attachments, a skeleton that announced its history of effort in every feature.

He had a torch.

He made it from materials his landscape provided — organic materials that burned with enough light to navigate by, materials he knew how to prepare and carry and maintain as he moved through a difficult cave.

He brought enough torch material to reach far into the mountain, which means he carried more than a casual explorer would need: this was planned, whatever it was.