The mechanism of this replacement remains unknown: migration, disease, climate stress, or some combination of forces could all be consistent with the genetic evidence.

The later history of the plateau — the elaboration of the Herrera ceramic tradition, the development of Muisca chiefdom society, the construction of the sophisticated political and economic networks that made the Muisca one of the most complex pre-Columbian societies north of the Inca — unfolded in a population that carried the Central American ancestry, not the earlier Checua lineage.

The Muisca, famous for their gold work and their religious ceremonies and the El Dorado legend they inspired, were the cultural and biological descendants of populations that had come from the north.

And the people who had lived on that plateau for the preceding four thousand years — the Checua lineage — were not their ancestors, at least not in any way that the current genetic tools can detect.