Published in Daily Mail Online
Archaeologists in Colombia have uncovered 6,000-year-old skeletons at the preceramic site of Checua, near Bogotá, belonging to hunter-gatherers whose DNA doesn’t match any known Indigenous population in the region today. Their genetic signature points to a distinct, now-extinct lineage that may have descended from the earliest humans to reach South America — a group that diverged early and remained isolated for thousands of years before vanishing entirely from the gene pool.
By analyzing ancient DNA from 21 individuals who lived in the Bogotá Altiplano between 6,000 and 500 years ago, researchers reconstructed a rare genetic timeline spanning nearly six millennia. The study, published in Science Advances, is the first to publish ancient human genomes from Colombia and is reshaping how scientists understand early migration into South America.
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