The ancient man’s name may never be known.

The exact meaning of every burial object may remain uncertain.

The details of the reburial may remain private.

Those gaps do not make the story incomplete.

They reveal that history is not the same thing as ownership.

We can know enough to understand why the case mattered.

We can know enough to see how science changed.

We can know enough to recognize the tribe’s persistence.

And then we can stop.

After more than ten thousand years, followed by decades of interruption, the Spirit Cave ancestor was finally allowed to disappear from public custody.