It is also, in the context of the actual history of the Americas and the actual identities and rights of contemporary Indigenous peoples, a connection that needs to be understood at the appropriate level of abstraction.

The ancient people of Lagoa Santa were Native Americans.

Their descendants are Native Americans.

The Population Y signal tells us something about the deep structure of the populations from which those Native Americans descended — it does not change who they are.

Why Simple Origin Stories Fail

The history of attempts to tell the story of the first Americans is, in many ways, a history of the failure of simple stories.

The Mound Builder Myth was a simple story — a mysterious, superior race had built the earthen monuments of the Mississippi Valley and had then vanished, leaving no descendants among the Native Americans who followed.