They are the questions that motivate the next phase of research — the search for ancient individuals from the gap period between 6,000 and 2,000 years before present, the expansion of geographic coverage to neighboring regions, the more comprehensive sampling of contemporary populations that might carry traces of Checua-related ancestry.

The science has achieved something remarkable: it has made visible, for the first time, a distinct early branch of South American population history that was completely unknown before 2025.

The seven Preceramic individuals from Checua — people who lived on a Colombian highland, hunted deer in the mountain grasslands, returned to the same settlement hill on the valley floor year after year, and left their bones in the earth of the Altiplano — have now been placed in the genetic family tree of the Americas.

Their placement is not simple or neat.