The Mal’ta genome contributed to this debate by clarifying one aspect of the founding population’s ancestry.

Before 2013, researchers modeling the genetics of Native American populations had recognized that the East Asian ancestry signal in Native American genomes was accompanied by something else — a component that did not fit neatly into the East Asian category, that seemed to come from somewhere different, but whose source was not clear.

The Mal’ta genome gave that component a face, a location, and an approximate time depth.

The something else was Ancient North Eurasian ancestry.