They were connected to the people who are here now.

The land was theirs from the beginning.

The genome said that.

The red ochre said it first.

The Clovis Debate Before The Genome Changed It

To fully appreciate what the Anzick-1 genome accomplished, it helps to understand the state of the “first Americans” debate as it stood in the years immediately before the 2014 publication — because the genome landed in a field that was simultaneously more contested and more confused than most public accounts acknowledged.

The Clovis-first model had dominated American archaeology for nearly four decades before it began to crack.