It calculates a coefficient of relatedness that approaches one, the signature of a shared zygote, a shared beginning, a shared genetic inheritance that set them apart from most other pairs of human beings in any population.

The limestone kept them for centuries.

The science read them back to the living world.

And the living Maya communities of the Yucatán — speaking languages that descend from the same linguistic traditions, inhabiting landscapes that their ancestors inhabited for millennia, maintaining cultural practices that draw on the same deep history — are the ongoing story of which the children in the chultún are a part.

Ancient genomics did not discover the Maya.