But the cave also contains plant macrofossils, pollen, microfossils, the chemical signatures of the fires that were once lit inside it, and a hundred other categories of evidence that have not yet been fully analyzed.

Future researchers, with methods that do not yet exist, will find more in this cave than anyone has yet found.

The bones that were removed in 1903, including Cheddar Man’s skeleton, will be analyzed with future methods that will extract information that current methods cannot access.

The deposits that remain in the cave, undisturbed since the excavation, will be analyzed with future methods that will reveal things about the Mesolithic occupation that no one has yet thought to ask.

The limestone is patient.