They tell us where the evidence is weak, because that is where the faces diverge.

They tell us which aspects of facial reconstruction are genuinely scientifically determined and which are, despite the scientific framing, still matters of interpretation, convention, and craft.

And they tell us something about the woman at the center of all of this — not more than any single face would have told us about what she actually looked like, but more about the nature of our knowledge of her and our relationship to her across the abyss of 45,000 years.

She was real.