The most important thing about the child is that he was loved, and that the people who loved him buried him carefully, and that their care has lasted twelve thousand years.

The Landscape Then And Now

The Montana hillside where the Anzick child was buried has changed enormously in twelve thousand years.

When he was buried, the Ice Age was ending.

The massive Pleistocene megafauna — mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, camels, horses, saber-toothed cats — were still present, though the populations of these animals were in decline as the climate warmed and as hunting pressure from the expanding human populations of the Americas increased.

The landscape was cooler and wetter than today’s Montana, and different plant communities occupied the valleys and hillsides.