The routes taken by the founders of South American populations — whether they moved primarily along the Pacific coast, through the Andes, through the Caribbean lowlands, or through the interior — could not be clearly addressed without genetic data from the relevant transitional region.

The 2025 study does not fully close this gap.

Its oldest individuals date to approximately 6,000 years before present — thousands of years after the initial peopling of the continent, which most researchers place at or before 15,000 years before present.

The study cannot directly address the routes and populations involved in the initial founding of South America.

What it does provide is a baseline for the genetic character of the Altiplano population at 6,000 years before present, demonstrating that the population of this region at that time was already a distinct lineage with a long history of separate development from other South American groups.

The depth of the Checua lineage’s divergence from other ancient South American populations implies that the differentiation between the Checua lineage and the ancestors of other South Americans occurred long before the 6,000-year-before-present individuals whose genomes were analyzed — potentially thousands of years earlier.