And beneath everything it covered — beneath the beads and the diadem and the carved birds and the small bones of a child who died before his fourth birthday — there was a genome that was waiting to tell a story larger than anyone who buried him could have imagined.

He was a child.

He was buried with love.

He was connected, through the improbable machinery of population history and ancient genomics, to the founding of the Americas.

The stone has been moved.

The story has been told.

The child remains.

What Has Not Been Said Enough