That is the nature of archaeological evidence.

It is always physical before it is intellectual.

The rib came first.

The understanding came later, across four and a half decades of investigation.

The Rib, The Point, And What They Preserve

The ending of this story keeps coming back to the rib, because the rib is where the story is physically located — in the object itself, not in the science about the object.

The science about the object is extraordinary.