Karl Walters' excitement about the discovery of human hair deep within an archaeological excavation -- a potentially radical discovery that may change accepted knowledge about when North America was colonized during the Ice Age -- is shattered by Native opposition which halts the work. The death of a crew member after a violent confrontation with activists at the site, DNA evidence that the hair is from an unknown type of archaic human and, by an ironic coincidence, an event triggered by intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, all combine to change Karl's world while also exposing deep fissures in human society; fissures that reveal a potentially fatal flaw embedded in humanity's origins. And one that may also cause its extinction.