At the same time, the connection between the specific people who occupied the Paisley Caves 14,000 years ago and any specific modern Indigenous community cannot be established by archaeological evidence alone.

The scale of demographic change — the movements of populations, the replacement of some groups by others, the mixing of different populations over thousands of years — that has occurred since the late Pleistocene means that the genetic and cultural continuity between ancient and modern populations is a complex question that requires its own specific evidence.

What the Paisley evidence does establish, with considerable strength, is the deep antiquity of human presence in the Great Basin.

It establishes that people were living in this landscape, exploiting its resources, and using the specific caves that are part of the ancestral land of the Indigenous peoples who have occupied the region through the historical period.