These are not communities living in complete isolation; they are communities participating in a network of exchange, kinship, and shared practices that extended across the sea.

The funerary practices evident at sites associated with these maritime networks — including the complex post-mortem treatments documented at Loch Borralie — may have been part of what was shared and transmitted across those networks.

If a specific way of treating the dead, including specific practices related to the skull and the long bones, was understood as carrying religious or social significance within this network, it could have been maintained and transmitted across the distances documented by the DNA analysis.

This is speculative, and the paper does not claim more than the DNA evidence directly supports.