It cannot tell us directly about the movement and differentiation of cultures, languages, or political identities, all of which can change more rapidly and by different mechanisms than genetic profiles.

Third, it supports the recognition that living Indigenous communities are not simply the biological outcomes of ancient population processes.

They are communities with their own histories, their own forms of self-knowledge, and their own accounts of who they are and where they come from — accounts that deserve to be taken seriously on their own terms, not just as data to be checked against the findings of population genetics.

The Ancient Beringians were real, in the specific sense that USR1 represents a real genetic lineage that diverged from other Native American lineages at a specific point in the past.