This in turn implies that the founding of South America involved rapid divergence of populations into distinct regional lineages shortly after the initial entry into the continent.

The ancestors of the Checua people must have separated from the common ancestor of other South Americans and established themselves on the Colombian highlands well before 6,000 years before present for the degree of genetic distinctiveness observed in the 2025 study to have developed.

The Comparison Populations And Why They Matter

The conclusions about the Checua lineage’s distinctiveness depend entirely on who it was compared to.

Understanding which populations were included in the researchers’ comparison dataset — and which were not — is essential for evaluating the strength of the “no detectable affinity” conclusion.