The question being asked was, at its most basic, where Anzick-1 fit in the family tree of human populations — which living or ancient populations was he most closely related to, and what did those relationships imply about the history of the earliest Americans?

The answer was clear and specific.

Anzick-1 was more closely related to Indigenous peoples of the Americas than to any other population tested.

The genetic distance between the ancient child’s genome and those of contemporary Native American populations was substantially smaller than the distance between his genome and populations from any other part of the world — from Europe, from Africa, from Asia, from anywhere.

This was significant in itself: a 12,600-year-old individual from Montana was genetically closer to living Native American populations than to any non-American population.