The most humanly compelling question raised by the discovery of the Ancient North Siberians is also the one that current evidence cannot definitively answer: where did they go?

The ANS were present above the Arctic Circle 31,000 years ago.

By the time of the Kolyma1 individual, 10,000 years ago, the ANS genetic signature is present in a diluted form, mixed with East Asian-related ancestry.

In modern northeastern Siberian and Arctic populations, traces of ANS-related ancestry are detectable but constitute only a small fraction of the overall genetic makeup.

In modern Native Americans, the ANS contribution is present but indirect, coming through the chain of ancestral mixing that connects the ANS to the founding population of the Americas via Kolyma-like intermediates.