When a melting glacier released its hold on a 4,000-year-old corpse in September, it was quite rightly called one of the most important archaeological findings of the century. 16 by a German couple hiking at 10,500 feet in the Italian Tyrol near the Austrian border, the partially freeze-dried body still wore remnants of leather garments and boots that had been 17 with straw for insulation. At his side was a bronze ax of a type 18 in southern central Europe around 2000 B.C. On his expedition he had carried an all-purpose stone knife, a wooden back-pack, a bow and a quiver, a small bag 19 a flint lighter and kindling, and an arrow repair kit in a leather pouch. Such everyday gear gives an unprecedented perspective on life in early Bronze Age Europe. “The most exciting thing is that we genuinely appear to be looking at a man who had some kind of 20 in the course of a perfectly ordinary trip,” says archaeologist Ian Kinnes of the British Museum. “These are not artifacts placed in a grave, but the fellow’s own possessions.”