But this finding is based on a limited number of ancient specimens from the relevant regions, and the temporal resolution of the data is still insufficient to be definitive.

The question of when the Population Y signal first appears in the ancient South American record, and whether that timing is consistent with the founding settlement or with a later introduction, remains open.

The Question “Who Got Here First?” and Why It Is Often Wrong

The Population Y debate has sometimes been framed as a question of “who got here first” — as if the finding of Australasian-related ancestry in some South American populations implies that there was a race to the Americas, with one founding group arriving before the main Native American founding population.

This framing is wrong in multiple ways, and understanding why it is wrong reveals something important about how population history actually works.