The Checua-to-Herrera transition is an example of both cultural and genetic change occurring together.

Ancient DNA allows researchers to distinguish between these different patterns in ways that archaeology alone cannot.

The Two Guane Individuals

The 2025 study also included two individuals from the Los Curos site in the Purnia area, associated with the Guane population of the northern Santander region of Colombia.

These individuals dated to approximately 530 years before present — the early colonial period — and provided a genetic data point from a population geographically adjacent to but culturally distinct from the Muisca.

The Guane were known to Spanish colonizers as a distinct people occupying the region north of the main Muisca territories.