Conclusion: The Gap Between Skull and Face

Forty-five thousand years is a number that defeats imagination.

Human working memory, evolved for the timescales of individual lives and perhaps a few generations of oral history, cannot genuinely encompass such a span.

We can say the number.

Write it down.

Use it in calculations.

But the actual experience of that much time — the accumulation of generations, of seasons, of human lives each as rich and complete as any life being lived right now — is simply beyond the reach of intuitive grasp.

The skull helps bridge that gap.