Native American Ancestors Arrived No Earlier Than 21,000 Years Ago, a New Review Finds

When did people first reach the Americas? A new review of ancient DNA points to a date no earlier than 21,000 years ago for the ancestors of today’s Indigenous peoples. The authors say the question is far from settled.

What the review says

Bethany Potter of the Kansas Geological Survey and Savannah Hay of the University of Kansas reviewed the genetic evidence. Live Science reports it appeared online on 23 September in Current Opinion in Genetics & Development. Since 2010, scientists have published about 250 whole ancient Indigenous genomes, plus genome-wide data from about 1,200 ancient Indigenous people. The data place the split of an ancestral group near Siberia and Beringia around 25,000 years ago, and the review suggests the ancestors of today’s Indigenous peoples arrived no earlier than 21,000 years ago. That window falls in the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest peak of the last ice age.

The White Sands problem

Human footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, date to about 23,000 years ago. If that date holds, people reached North America before the ice age peak. So far, genetic data shows the White Sands population made no significant genetic contribution to later Indigenous ancestors. That leaves the footprint makers as a possible earlier group that left no known descendants in the DNA record.

The authors’ caveats

“There are huge gaps in our genetic dataset,” the researchers write, and they note that no ancient genomes from the Great Plains have been published. “Earlier migrations may also have occurred.” The authors say it is unclear whether the question of first arrival will ever be resolved.

Sources

• Live Science: ancestors of today’s Indigenous people arrived during the coldest part of the last ice age (2 October 2026)
• Potter and Hay, Current Opinion in Genetics & Development (2026), as cited by Live Science