The age of the USR1 burial — approximately 11,500 years before the present — is often presented as placing the Upward Sun River infant among the very earliest Americans.

This is accurate in a specific sense: she is among the oldest Americans whose remains have been recovered and whose genome has been successfully analyzed.

But it is important to understand that 11,500 years is not close to the actual beginning of human presence in the Americas.

The evidence for human presence in the Americas before 11,500 years ago is now extensive and comes from multiple independent lines of inquiry.

The footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico — dated by multiple independent methods to approximately 21,000 to 23,000 years before the present — represent the most dramatic physical evidence of human presence during the Last Glacial Maximum.