They were the ancestors, in the broad population-level sense, of everyone who came after them in these landscapes.

They were here.

They were real.

They were people, with all the human complexity that implies.

And they left enough evidence behind — in the dark sinkholes of the limestone plateau, in the floodplain sediments of the Guadalupe River — for us to know something, however partial, about who they were.

The mystery hidden in their ancient DNA may never be fully resolved.

The questions they raise about ancestry, identity, and the deep human history of North America will persist.