No single researcher, and no single study, produced the understanding that the 2018 genome publication represented.

The radiocarbon dating revolution that revealed the burial’s true age in the 1990s was the product of decades of refinement in dating methodology — the development of accelerator mass spectrometry, the calibration of the radiocarbon timescale using tree rings and other independent records, and the accumulation of experience in applying these methods to archaeological materials.

The ancient DNA revolution that made the genome analysis possible was similarly the product of decades of methodological development — the invention of polymerase chain reaction for amplifying small amounts of DNA, the development of next-generation sequencing technologies, the refinement of computational methods for identifying and filtering ancient DNA sequences, and the specific technical advances for working with the highly degraded DNA of ancient remains.

The population genomics framework that allowed the Spirit Cave Man’s genome to be interpreted in relation to other ancient and modern populations was built on decades of research on both modern and ancient human genetics — the mapping of global human genetic diversity, the development of statistical methods for inferring population history from genomic data, and the accumulation of comparative genomic data from populations around the world.