The 2014 publication of the Anzick Child genome — from a 12,600-year-old Clovis-associated burial in Montana — established the genetic relationship between the Clovis-era population and modern Native Americans, confirming that modern Indigenous peoples of the Americas descend from the founders who crossed from Asia in the terminal Pleistocene.

The subsequent publication of genomes from Spirit Cave, from Hoyo Negro in the Yucatan Peninsula, from ancient individuals across North and South America has built an increasingly detailed picture of how the founding populations diversified, migrated, and related to each other over thousands of years.

Each new ancient genome is a data point in this picture.

Each one either confirms what was already known from other sites or reveals something new — a previously unrecognized migration, an unexpected genetic relationship, a period of population replacement that left no obvious trace in the archaeological record.

The Texas Early Archaic populations, represented at sites like Bering Sinkhole and Buckeye Knoll, are a gap in this picture.