He did not know this.

He was a child who died before his fourth birthday and was buried with great care by people who loved him.

His significance in the larger story of human prehistory was not apparent to anyone who attended his burial, or to anyone who lived in the thousands of years between his death and the moment when an archaeologist’s shovel or tool reached the stone slab that covered him.

The significance was always there, encoded in his cells, waiting for the science that could read it.