The most important thing to understand about all of these framings is that they describe the current state of the scientific knowledge, not an exhaustive truth about what happened.

The knowledge will expand as more ancient genomes are analyzed from more sites across Colombia and neighboring regions.

Some of the framings that currently seem dramatic may become more nuanced — or more extreme — as the larger picture becomes clearer.

The Open Question At The Center

Here is the thing that the 2025 Science Advances paper could not answer, despite answering so much else.

The genetic evidence documents that the Checua lineage existed on the Bogotá Altiplano at approximately 6,000 years before present, that it was genetically distinct from other South American populations, and that by approximately 2,000 years before present its detectable signal had been replaced by ancestry related to Central American populations.