The model it has established — of specialists from very different disciplines working together on a site that no single discipline could investigate alone — is one that will likely be applied to other underwater archaeological sites as the field develops.

Naia is still there, in the dark, at the bottom of the chamber.

The light reaches her sometimes, when the divers come.

And each time the light finds her, the cave gives up a little more of what it has kept — not all at once, not easily, but steadily, as science and respect and time work together toward a fuller understanding of who she was and what she represents.

The story of the first Americans is still being written.

Naia is one of its oldest surviving words.