The Conversation That Ancient DNA Started

The Anzick-1 genome was not an end.

It was a beginning.

In the decade since its publication, the conversation that it started — about who the first Americans were, about how their descendants relate to living Native peoples, about how ancient DNA research should be conducted in relation to Indigenous communities, about what genomic evidence can and cannot tell us about human history — has continued and expanded.

The field of ancient American genomics has grown from a handful of researchers working on a small number of samples to a substantial international enterprise involving dozens of research groups, hundreds of ancient specimens, and sophisticated analytical methods that were barely imaginable when the Anzick paper was being written.