The Ancient Beringians represent a third element in this framework — a lineage that diverged from the common ancestor of Northern and Southern Native Americans before those two groups split from each other.

In the branching genealogy of Native American founding populations, Ancient Beringians are the earliest-diverging branch identified in the ancient-genome record so far.

The three-part framework — Ancient Beringians, Northern Native Americans, Southern Native Americans — is the current best model for the major structure of founding Native American population diversity.

It is not necessarily complete.

Other founding lineages may exist that have not yet been identified, either because the relevant ancient specimens have not been analyzed or because those lineages have been absorbed into later populations in ways that make them difficult to detect.

The history of science on this question is a history of successive revisions as new data have revealed unexpected complexity.