Human skeletal remains are far rarer than stone tools, and ancient DNA from those remains is rarer still.

Of the thousands of early Americans who lived and died across the hemisphere in the first few thousand years of human occupation, we have skeletal evidence for only a tiny number and useful ancient DNA for even fewer.

Each individual who joins this record adds something that was not there before — a specific data point, a specific time and place and lineage, a specific person who lived and died and whose bones have carried their evidence across the millennia.

The Hourglass Cave man is part of this small and precious record.