That disappearance was not the loss of the story.

It was the fulfillment of it.

The Difference Between A Solved Case And A Finished Story

By the time the Spirit Cave genome was published and the ancestor had been reburied, the central legal dispute was over.

The government no longer held the remains.

The tribe had regained authority.

Genetic evidence had answered the question that had dominated years of debate.

Yet the story did not become irrelevant simply because the case was resolved.

In some ways, resolution made the deeper issues easier to see.

During the dispute, attention focused on the immediate question of affiliation.