Those teeth spent 31,000 years in the frozen ground, while agriculture was invented, while civilizations rose and fell, while the sea swallowed Beringia and the English Channel filled in, while the Roman Empire rose and fell, while the printing press was invented and the scientific method was developed and the theory of evolution was articulated and the structure of DNA was discovered and the human genome was sequenced and ancient DNA research was developed into a mature field capable of reading 31,000-year-old genetic code.

All of that happened, and the teeth waited.

And then they were found, and sequenced, and understood.

The patience of ice.

The persistence of biological information.

The eventual convergence of curiosity and technology.

The Ancient North Siberians are in the record now.

They were a significant part of human history, as Professor Willerslev said.