The information that the bones, the cave context, the radiocarbon dates, and the DNA together provide is extraordinary — far more than most ancient individuals from this period and region have yielded.

But it does not add up to a person in the full sense of a human life.

He was a man.

He was robust and middle-aged.

He carried a maternal lineage rooted in the founding diversity of the Americas.

He navigated difficult terrain at high altitude with artificial light.

He entered a cave more than a thousand feet deep, where the darkness is total and the cold is constant, and he did not come back out.

Everything else is unknown.