The human footprint on the natural world was light, almost imperceptible in geological terms.

In this world, the community at Yana RHS was not a primitive or pre-modern group.

They were anatomically and behaviorally modern humans, with language, social complexity, artistic production, and sophisticated technology.

They were as cognitively capable as any human alive today.

Their technology was different — stone and bone and ivory, rather than steel and polymer — but the intelligence and creativity that produced it was the same intelligence and creativity that produced everything since.

Two of the children of this community grew and shed their milk teeth above the Arctic Circle.