The materials from Danger Cave documented a changing human adaptation to a changing landscape: from the early Holocene period of relatively abundant wetland resources to the Middle and Late Holocene adaptation to the increasingly dry and sparse environment that the Great Basin was becoming.

Fort Rock Cave in Oregon yielded a pair of woven sagebrush sandals dated to approximately 10,000 years ago — among the oldest footwear yet found in North America, predating the Spirit Cave moccasins only slightly and reflecting the same general tradition of woven and hide footwear that the Spirit Cave burial exemplified.

This broader archaeological context is important for understanding the Spirit Cave Man not as an isolated curiosity but as a representative of a people — an early Great Basin population that was already substantially adapted to the specific demands of the region’s environment, that had developed sophisticated material culture and subsistence strategies, and that would eventually give rise, through the long processes of cultural evolution and population continuity, to the historic peoples of the Great Basin.

The Spirit Cave Man was not the beginning of that story.