But it is the kind of challenge that the ancient DNA revolution has repeatedly shown can be met, given sufficient time, resources, and scientific creativity.

The Ancient North Siberians are a known unknown: a population whose existence we now know about, whose broad outline we can sketch, but whose full story — their origins, their extent, their fate — we cannot yet tell.

The Significance For Native American History

The connection between the Ancient North Siberians and the history of Native American peoples is indirect but real.

Understanding it requires holding two ideas simultaneously: the ANS were not the direct ancestors of Native Americans, and yet the ANS are part of the ancestral story of Native Americans.