Genetics describes one aspect of ancestry.

The full inheritance that connects the living to the ancient dead is cultural, ecological, spiritual, linguistic, and social as well as biological.

The Maya of the Yucatán did not need a scientific paper to know that their relationship to their landscape was ancient.

Their oral traditions, their ceremonial practices, their knowledge of the cenotes and the caves and the seasonal rhythms of the peninsula’s ecology — all of this reflects a depth of knowing that comes only from generations upon generations of living in a specific place.

The scientific finding that an ancient person in their landscape carried a founding American haplogroup adds a molecular confirmation of depth they already knew was there.