The limestone preserves things — not in the sentimental sense, but in the literal chemical sense.

Cool, alkaline, stable.

Resistant to the acid that destroys organic matter.

A matrix that can protect biological material from the processes of decay.

Gough’s Cave is still there.

Tourists still walk through it, guided by the electric lights, past the stalactites and the formations.

In the back of the cave, in the limestone chambers that Cheddar Man knew as darkness and stone, the cool air still moves gently, still maintains the stable low temperature that preserved his bones and his DNA for ten thousand years.

The cave does not know what it preserved.