First, the “who got here first” framing presupposes that the Americas were populated by two distinct, competing groups — Group A and Group B — and that determining which group arrived first determines something important about the historical priority or legitimacy of the resulting populations.

This is not how human population history works.

Populations are not discrete entities that move through space as coherent units; they are dynamic collections of individuals who reproduce, interact, mix, and disperse in complex ways.

The question of whether “Population Y” arrived before or after the “main” Native American founding population is, in an important sense, a category error — it treats populations as if they were ships in a race rather than as what they actually were: people.

Second, the “who got here first” framing implies that arriving first confers some kind of historical priority or special status on the resulting population.