This continuity extended from the period of the Spirit Cave Man through periods of severe drought and environmental stress in the middle and late Holocene, all the way to the historic and contemporary peoples of the region.

The study described this as an unbroken human presence in the Great Basin for more than 10,000 years — a demonstration of extraordinary cultural and biological resilience.

The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe was among the Indigenous partners in the study, contributing their knowledge of the landscape and its history to the scientific analysis.

Their oral traditions — which described long occupation of the Great Basin and specific relationships with the landscape’s resources — were consistent with what the scientific evidence showed.

The study was, in a sense, the scientific completion of the process that the DNA analysis had initiated.