For a period of perhaps several thousand years, this population was isolated in Beringia, accumulating genetic changes specific to the isolated population while the rest of the world continued to evolve along different trajectories.

The genetic signature of this isolation — the specific pattern of genetic differentiation that accumulated during the standstill period — is reflected in the distinctive genetic makeup of Native American populations.

Native Americans are more closely related to northeastern Asian populations than to any other non-American group, but they differ from those Asian populations in specific ways that reflect the genetic changes that occurred during the period of Beringian isolation.

The standstill model proposes that these differences accumulated over the thousands of years when the founding population was isolated in Beringia before moving south.