We cannot know how they understood their own history — whether they had traditions that reached back to the time of their arrival on the plateau, or what those traditions might have said about where they came from.

The bones and the genomes tell us things that are genuinely remarkable: that they were a distinct lineage, that they had been on that plateau for a long time, that they were part of the early South American radiation but had taken their own path within it.

This is knowledge that no previous generation of scientists possessed, and it is knowledge that changes our understanding of the deep human history of northwestern South America.

But it is not a full human story.