Either way, it suggested a life of remarkable mobility.

He had suffered a serious injury at some point in his life.

Embedded in his right hip was a stone projectile point — a spear tip or large dart point made from a fine-grained volcanic rock called Cascade.

The point had entered his body at an angle, passed through soft tissue, and lodged itself in the ilium, one of the bones of the pelvis.

It had been there long enough that the bone had grown around it, partially encasing it in new tissue — evidence that he had survived the wound, lived with it for years, possibly decades.

Someone had tried to kill him once.

Or perhaps it was an accident.

Or perhaps it was something in between — the kind of violence that punctuates lives in every era of human history, ancient and modern alike.

Whatever the circumstances, he had survived it.

The wound had not killed him.