They represented technical knowledge: how to gather plants, process fibers, twist and weave them, make clothing and containers, and construct objects suited to desert and wetland life.

The burial also shows social meaning.

Human beings do not wrap and place their dead carefully without relationships.

The person in Spirit Cave belonged to other people.

Someone made decisions about his body.

Someone carried out the burial.

Someone lived long enough beside him to care what happened after he died.

Those facts are easy to lose when an archaeological individual is reduced to an accession number, age estimate, skull measurement, or genome.

The scientific record can tell us remarkable things.

It cannot tell us his name.