These initial results were already striking.

The genetic signatures in MA-1’s maternal and paternal lineages were not the signatures expected if he were simply an early representative of the East Asian populations that had been hypothesized as the primary source of Native American ancestry.

They were signatures associated with western Eurasian populations — or at least with populations ancestral to both western Eurasians and something that would later appear in the Americas.

But the autosomal DNA analysis — the most comprehensive and the most powerful for population history reconstruction — was the most consequential finding.