And it required something that no artifact can directly show but that the presence of children in this community implies: the capacity to rear and protect young people through the Arctic winter.

Children are vulnerable.

They require warmth, food, care, and time.

In the most demanding environment humans had yet chosen to inhabit, this community was raising children.

Two of those children lost their teeth at this site.

And 31,000 years later, those teeth would tell the world something extraordinary about who these people were.

The Site Before The DNA — Why Yana Already Changed Everything

When Pitulko and colleagues published the Yana site in Science in 2004, the reaction from the archaeological community was strong.