He was between forty and fifty-five years old when he died — a remarkable age for someone living in the ancient world, where life was physically demanding and medical care as we understand it did not exist.

Reaching middle age in that era required not just luck but resilience, adaptability, and strength.

He stood approximately five feet nine inches tall — notably tall for a prehistoric individual, and taller than the average modern American male of the early 1990s.

He was right-handed.

Scientists could tell this from the slightly greater development of the bones in his right arm — the accumulated result of decades of repeated motion, the skeleton literally recording the patterns of a life.

He had eaten a diet rich in marine protein throughout his lifetime — not fish from rivers, but from the ocean.

The isotopic analysis of his bones showed the distinctive chemical signature of a diet heavily weighted toward ocean mammals: seals, sea lions, perhaps whales.

This was extraordinary.

Kennewick, Washington, is far inland — hundreds of miles from the Pacific coast.

Either this man had spent most of his life near the ocean before dying far inland, or he had traveled so regularly between coastal and interior regions that the ocean’s signature had permanently marked his bones.