The public can understand the history without possessing every detail.

Researchers can preserve the scientific record without continuing to handle the ancestor.

A tribe can decide that some knowledge remains within the community.

That boundary may be the clearest evidence that control truly changed hands.

For decades, institutions had the authority to decide what could be studied and shown.

After repatriation, the tribe did.

The story therefore ends not with another discovery, but with the acceptance that discovery has limits.

That is unusual in popular history, which often treats unanswered questions as invitations for more investigation.

Spirit Cave offers another possibility.

Sometimes an unanswered question should remain unanswered because the right to ask it does not belong to everyone.