The question is what happened to that knowledge as the people who held it died.

In communities where oral tradition is the primary vehicle for historical knowledge, the death of elders is the death of specific pieces of information.

If the knowledge of the burial location was held by a small number of people who each carried only part of the information — a protective strategy in which no single person’s capture or coercion could reveal the full picture — then the accidental death or ordinary passing of those people could have fragmented or lost the complete location.

Whether the full location knowledge has been lost or whether it is still held by specific people within the family and community — held consciously, with the understanding that disclosure to outsiders is not appropriate — is itself not something the public record can establish.