They sheltered from the cold.

They made tools and used them.

They ate and raised children and cared for their injured.

And when someone died, they did something with the body.

Something deliberate.

Something that required them to act, rather than simply to leave.

The cave remembers, in the way that caves remember — in stone and sediment and the careful, fragile chemistry of ancient bone.

And we are slowly learning to read what it has preserved.