They would not have understood — they could not have anticipated — that the biological traces of their daily existence would one day become the subject of international scientific debate, that machines built from principles of physics they had no knowledge of would analyze the molecular constituents of those traces, or that the results of that analysis would contribute to a revised understanding of when and how the Americas came to be inhabited by human beings.

What they left was only what they had — themselves, their technologies, their diet, their biology.

The coprolites in the Oregon cave were not a message to the future.

They were a coincidence of preservation, rescued from oblivion by the specific chemistry of an alkaline cave and the specific dedication of researchers who understood what those dark, dried specimens might contain.

That is enough.