The Northern Native American and Southern Native American Branches

To fully understand the significance of Ancient Beringian ancestry and how the Trail Creek child fits into the broader picture of Native American population history, it is necessary to say more about the Northern Native American and Southern Native American branches that, together with Ancient Beringians, constitute the genetic framework within which early American population history is currently understood.

The Northern Native American branch encompasses most of the Indigenous populations of North America north of Mexico — the hundreds of distinct nations and communities that occupied the continent from the subarctic to the tropical southwest, speaking languages from dozens of distinct families, maintaining diverse cultural traditions, and adapting to environments as different as the Arctic tundra and the desert Southwest.

From a genetic perspective, Northern Native American populations share a specific cluster of ancestry that distinguishes them from other human populations and that reflects their descent from the founding population that crossed into the Americas through Beringia.