The human material recovered from the cave included bones and teeth — physical remains representing a specific individual who had died in the cave or whose remains had been deposited there.

The remains were fragmentary rather than complete — not a fully preserved skeleton laid out in anatomical order, but specific skeletal elements that had survived the millennia in the specific preservation conditions of the cave.

Teeth, in particular, are among the most durable components of the human skeleton.

Their dense enamel and dentine structure resists many of the decay processes that affect softer tissues and even cortical bone, and in cave environments with favorable chemistry, they can preserve well across very long time spans.

The bones and teeth recovered from On Your Knees Cave were subjected to radiocarbon dating — the analytical technique that measures the remaining concentration of carbon-14 in organic material to determine how long ago the organism that produced it died.