The children who lost their teeth at Yana 31,000 years ago were members of a community that chose to be where it was.

The Arctic above 70 degrees north latitude is not where humans end up accidentally.

You end up there because the resources that support your way of life are there, and because you have the knowledge and the technology to exploit those resources and survive the climate that comes with them.

The community at Yana was there because their way of life worked in that environment — worked well enough to support children, to maintain a community across multiple seasons, to produce the material sophistication visible in the archaeological record.

The story of human presence in the Arctic — of which the Yana community represents the earliest known chapter — is a story that continues without interruption to the present day.