A major study published in Science has sequenced the oldest human genome ever recovered from the Amazon Basin. The DNA, extracted from a 13,000-year-old molar found in the Caverna da Pedra Pintada, reveals a 'ghost' lineage that diverged from the ancestors of North American Paleo-Indians before the final crossing of the Beringian land bridge.
This genetic evidence indicates that the colonization of South America involved multiple distinct pulses of migration, some of which bypassed the Andean highlands entirely to settle in the tropical lowlands. The findings challenge the 'Clovis-First' model and provide a complex new map of Pleistocene human dispersal across the Americas.