But the tip struck bone.

The bone held the tip.

The bone became mineralized and was buried and was preserved by the specific chemistry of an ancient Pacific Northwest wetland.

A backhoe found it in 1977.

A scientist recognized what it was.

Decades of investigation followed, using technology that advanced from conventional radiocarbon dating to AMS methods to high-resolution CT to biomolecular protein analysis to digital segmentation and 3D reconstruction.

And across nearly fourteen thousand years, the weapon said what it had been saying all along: