It was a branch of the Native American founding population — a distinct branch, one that diverged early and maintained its distinctiveness for thousands of years, but a branch of the same founding lineage that gave rise to all Native American peoples.

USR1 was more closely related to Native Americans than to any non-American population.

The Ancient Beringians were Native Americans in the deepest genetic sense — they were part of the founding population of the hemisphere.

The simplified version that treats the Ancient Beringians as a separate, non-Native founding group — as a lost or vanished race that preceded the “real” Native Americans — is not only factually wrong but potentially harmful.

It feeds a narrative that has been used repeatedly to question Indigenous claims to ancient presence in the Americas: the idea that there was a more ancient, mysterious people who were later replaced or displaced by the ancestors of contemporary Indigenous communities.