It is an archaeological story — one in which archives that have been sealed for centuries are being opened by forces that operate on their own schedule, without regard for whether scientists or communities are ready to receive what the ice has kept.

The discovery of Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi was, from one perspective, a gift of the retreating ice — a person returned by the glacier at a moment when the scientific and cultural capacities existed to study him with some care and respect.

Future discoveries in the same region and in other glaciated areas around the world will likely not all be so fortuitously timed.

Some will emerge quickly and be damaged before they can be properly documented.