They kept it sacred in the way that burial ceremonies are meant to be kept — away from cameras, away from reporters, away from the apparatus of public spectacle.

He had come home.

After 8,400 years in the ground beside the Columbia River, after a year of examination by scientists, after more than two decades in federal custody while lawyers argued over his bones — the ancient man had finally been returned to the earth by the people who are his descendants.

Roberta Conner, director of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, the cultural center of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, spoke after the reburial: “We are grateful and relieved that our ancestor has been returned to the earth where he can rest, as our cultural traditions require.”

The scientists who had fought for the right to study the remains expressed their views in different terms.

Douglas Owsley of the Smithsonian — who had led the scientific team and testified extensively in the legal proceedings — said that he believed significant information could still have been extracted from the bones with future technology, and that reburial was a loss to science.

He remained committed to the view that the study of ancient remains was essential to understanding human history.

He was not wrong, exactly.

There is always more to learn.

There is always a future technology that might extract more information from preserved material.