The fragmentary bone preservation, and the limits of what even the most sophisticated bioarchaeological analysis can determine, means that why this child died remains unknown.

It could have been illness, injury, the hazards of birth in a world without modern medicine, or simply the harsh conditions of late Pleistocene life that made infant and child mortality a constant companion for prehistoric peoples everywhere.

We do not know what the people who buried this child believed about death, about what follows it, about where the dead go or what they need when they get there.

The red ochre and the extraordinary artifact assemblage tell us that they believed something — that they thought the child’s treatment in death mattered, that specific objects and substances were appropriate to send with the dead, that the ritual of burial required specific materials and specific practices.