It is not a connection that tells that person anything specific about what it means to be Cherokee today, or about the specific cultural heritage of the Cherokee nation, or about the particular history of the Cherokee people in the historical period.

The same is true for any other contemporary Indigenous nation or community.

The genetic connection to the Ancient North Eurasian ancestry documented in the Mal’ta genome is a connection to a very deep layer of ancestry — a layer that predates the founding of the Americas, predates the diversification of Native American cultures, predates the development of any of the specific languages or traditions that define contemporary Indigenous communities.

But as a biological fact about the deep ancestry of the hemisphere’s original peoples, it is significant and meaningful.