The mountains are still there.

The morning light still comes in low from the east.

And the people who are his descendants — in the broad, biological, meaningful sense that the genome confirmed — are still here too.

They always were.

A Note On What Science Owes The Past

There is a particular responsibility that comes with being able to read what the bones of the dead carry in their molecular structure — a responsibility that the scientific community has not always honored, and that the Anzick case forced into clearer focus than any previous ancient American DNA project had managed.

For most of the history of archaeology, ancient human remains were treated primarily as sources of information — material to be analyzed, compared, categorized, and stored.