These numbers give the scientific finding its human weight.

They transform the abstract claim — “MA-1 was related to the ancestors of Native Americans” — into something closer to what that relationship actually means.

A substantial portion of the ancestral heritage of the Indigenous peoples of two continents traces back to a population that buried its dead at Mal’ta, that carved ivory figurines of women, that placed a tiara on a three-year-old child and covered his grave with a stone.

The numbers make it real.