The Spirit Cave Mummy from Nevada dates to approximately 10,600 calibrated years before the present.

The Anzick burial in Montana, associated with Clovis technology, dates to roughly 12,600 years.

The individuals from the Upward Sun River site in Alaska date to approximately 11,500 years.

The man from Hourglass Cave is substantially younger than these individuals.

But what makes him significant is not just his age.

It is the combination of his age, his location, and what the physical evidence of his presence in the cave says about how people were using the Rocky Mountain landscape approximately 8,800 years ago.

He is evidence — specific, physical, radiocarbon-dated evidence — of high-altitude human activity in the Colorado Rockies at a time period for which direct physical evidence of this kind is rare.