He was aware that the association between human and animal bones in a cave context did not necessarily prove contemporaneity — bones from different time periods can become mixed in caves through the action of water, animals, or subsequent human disturbance.

He reported his findings carefully, noting the associations and the questions they raised without overstating what he could actually prove.

The subsequent history of the interpretation of Lund’s finds was considerably less cautious.

The Lagoa Santa skeletal material became a focus of debate about human antiquity, about the morphological characteristics of ancient Americans, and about the relationship between the ancient people of Lagoa Santa and the living Indigenous populations of Brazil.

That debate involved some of the leading physical anthropologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its conclusions were sometimes shaped as much by the racial assumptions of the era as by the actual evidence.