That relationship extends back through time in ways that connect them, in a broad sense, to the ancient people of the Rocky Mountains — but the specific thread of ancestry from the early Holocene to the present-day Southern Ute community involves thousands of years of demographic, cultural, and genetic change that cannot be traced in detail from the current evidence.

What the Hourglass Cave man shares with the Southern Ute people and with all other Native American communities is the broader heritage of the founding population of the Americas — the haplogroup B maternal lineage that his DNA documented, and the other founding lineages that are part of the genetic diversity of all Indigenous peoples of the hemisphere.

That connection is real and meaningful, even if it is not a specific genealogical relationship that can be documented.

The Living Tradition Of High-Country Knowledge