The results came back from Riverside.

Chatters stared at the number.

Then he read it again.

The bone was between 8,340 and 9,200 years old.

Not a few centuries.

Not a few thousand years, in the way that phrase is sometimes used loosely.

Eight thousand years.

Nine thousand years.

A span of time so deep that it predated the Egyptian pyramids by five thousand years.

A span of time that stretched back to when mammoths still walked the earth in parts of Asia.