That would miss the point.

The genome answered an important question, but the tribe had not been waiting for a laboratory to tell it that Native people belonged to the Great Basin.

The community’s claim came first.

The science eventually caught up.

The most meaningful ending is therefore not the genetic result itself.

It is the burial.

After decades of study, litigation, classification, and debate, the Spirit Cave individual was no longer being asked to prove who he was.

He was returned to the earth.

The modern world had turned him into one of North America’s most famous ancient bodies.

The tribe turned him back into an ancestor.