The Mal’ta boy is famous, in the circles where he is known, because his genome changed what scientists understood about the founding of the Americas.

He deserves to be known for something else as well: for the fact that he was mourned, and that the mourning was expressed in objects of remarkable beauty and craft, by people who did not know they were making history and who were not trying to make history.

They were just trying to do right by their child.

In that, they are utterly recognizable.

In that, they are us.