There is a productive tension at the heart of the Paisley Caves story that is worth naming explicitly.

The evidence is as humble as evidence gets.

A small, dried, dark organic mass in the sediment of an Oregon cave — the preserved biological waste of people who had no idea anyone would ever look at it, much less extract DNA from it, or analyze its cholesterol metabolites, or compare it to the fecal biomarker profiles of other mammals.

The question that this humble evidence addresses is among the largest that archaeology asks.

When did the Americas first become inhabited?