Various alternative models had been proposed at different times: that the Clovis people were unrelated to or only distantly related to modern Native Americans; that they represented a separate founding population that had been replaced by later migrants; or, in more extreme formulations, that the earliest Americans had some connection to populations from other parts of the world — a claim for which the genetic evidence has never provided support.

The Anzick genome answered the most fundamental version of this question clearly and definitively.

The Clovis child was a member of the same broadly defined genetic group as modern Native Americans.

The ancestral population of the Clovis people was the same ancestral population from which all Native Americans descend.

The Clovis expansion was not a separate historical episode disconnected from the ancestry of living people — it was the first chapter of the history of the Native American peoples who continue to inhabit the Americas.

This result had implications that extended well beyond the specific debate about Clovis origins.