The modern comparison populations included a wide range of present-day Indigenous communities from across South America, including Chibchan-speaking populations from Panama and Colombia.

The finding that the Checua individuals showed no detectable specific affinity to any of these comparison populations is striking precisely because of the breadth of the comparison.

Researchers often find that ancient individuals show closest affinity to modern or ancient populations from the same geographic region; the absence of such an affinity for the Checua individuals, despite being compared against populations from across the Americas, indicates a genuine genetic distinctiveness.

However, the comparison was not exhaustive.