Tens of thousands of miles away and 24,000 years later, different stones are doing different work.

The flint cores, already mined and knapped and used and discarded across Europe and Asia for centuries, are being used to mark layers in geological sequences that allow the reconstruction of climate histories.

The limestones of cave walls, where the deep-time records of stalagmites and stalactites allow the calibration of radiocarbon dates.

The minerals in the permafrost that slowed the bacterial degradation of the child’s bones and preserved the genetic material within them.

Stones as tools, stones as records, stones as preservers.