They happened to desiccate rapidly, to be buried in sediment that preserved their organic chemistry, to be located in a cave that maintained the right conditions for preservation across 14,000 years, and to survive the accidental disturbances — animal activity, occasional water movement, the inevitable geological processes of a dynamic landscape — that might have destroyed them at any point.

That they survived, and that the chemistry of their organic content turned out to carry the specific information needed to place their producers within the founding lineages of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, is the kind of improbable gift that archaeological science occasionally receives from the past.

The people at Paisley 14,000 years ago were, by every available measure, full human beings.

They had a material culture sophisticated enough to produce the Western Stemmed points found in the caves.