He was a point in its middle — or perhaps its early middle.

People had been in the Great Basin before him.

But he is the best-preserved and most completely analyzed representative of the early part of that long human history that has yet been found.

The 2025 Study That Extended The Story

In 2025, a major new study led by archaeologist David Hurst Thomas of the American Museum of Natural History extended the story of the Great Basin’s human occupation in significant ways, using the Spirit Cave findings as a foundation.

The study, published in the journal American Antiquity, combined genomic data — including data from the Spirit Cave Man — with an extraordinary amount of archaeological evidence: more than 480 radiocarbon dates from across the Lahontan Basin, along with thousands of projectile point samples from archaeological sites spanning more than 10,000 years.