As a result, they carry a genetic profile that is in some ways more similar to the ancient southern-route populations than many other contemporary populations.

The genetic similarity between Andamanese populations and the Population Y signal in South American genomes is statistically significant and consistently found across multiple analyses.

This consistency with the Andamanese — a specific population that is geographically far from South America, that has a well-characterized position in global human ancestry, and that has maintained relative genetic isolation — provides some important constraints on the models proposed to explain the signal.

The Andamanese genetic profile reflects ancestry from an early dispersal out of Africa along the southern coastal route.