The Genetic Diversity of Native American Populations Today

The Anzick genome’s confirmation that the Clovis child was ancestral to modern Native Americans raises a natural follow-up question: what is the relationship between the Clovis founding event and the genetic diversity of Native American populations today?

The answer is complex, because 13,000 years is a long time, and a lot happened between the Clovis founding and the present.

Modern Native American populations are genetically diverse — considerably more diverse in some respects than is sometimes appreciated.