That was ancient, but not extraordinary enough to transform the story of North American archaeology.

Then the technology changed.

Radiocarbon dating had revolutionized archaeology in the second half of the twentieth century, and accelerator mass spectrometry made it possible to date much smaller samples with greater precision.

When materials associated with the Spirit Cave burial were retested in the 1990s, the result was startling.

The individual was roughly 10,600 years old.

That single number transformed the case.

The burial was no longer merely an old museum specimen.

It had become one of the oldest known human burials in North America, dating back to the early Holocene, when the Great Basin looked different from the landscape people know today and when human populations across the continent were adapting to enormous environmental change.

For scientists, the new date was thrilling.

A burial this old could potentially illuminate questions about migration, diet, clothing, technology, health, and the ways early peoples moved through and understood the Great Basin.