MA-1 was not analyzed in isolation.

The power of the study’s conclusions came partly from the comparison of the MA-1 genome against a carefully curated dataset of modern and ancient human populations from around the world.

The modern population dataset used in the 2014 analysis included hundreds of populations from across the globe, representing the full range of contemporary human genetic diversity.

The ancient population dataset was smaller — ancient genome research was younger in 2014 than it is today — but included key ancient individuals from Europe, Asia, and North America that had been analyzed in earlier studies.

Among the modern populations, MA-1 showed its strongest statistical affinities to two groups that might seem, at first, surprising in combination: modern Native Americans and modern western Eurasians.