The Ancient Highlanders of the Bogotá Altiplano

On the cool high plain around Bogotá, Colombia's first ancient genomes traced six thousand years of settlement. The earliest inhabitants, the preceramic foragers of Checua, proved to be a previously unknown basal South American lineage that left no descendants among the later people of the plateau. Around two thousand years ago, with the arrival of the Herrera ceramic complex, that gene pool was replaced by Chibchan-related ancestry from Central America, and it then persisted through the Muisca period even as culture changed around it. The eleven people here come from Laguna de La Herrera and Las Delicias and belong to that later population. The researchers consulted the Guardia Indigena Muisca; genetic ancestry and cultural identity remain separate things.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in A 6000-year-long genomic transect from the Bogotá Altiplano.

Every Ancestry Map includes the free Notable Matches lens: your coordinates are compared to every sequenced member of every catalog entry, and the distance to the closest member is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional space the Distance lens uses. Because these are a small group of real individuals, not a population average, distances naturally run larger than population distances. That is expected, not a poor result. And one thing is never claimed: a small distance means similar ancestry composition, not that the Ancient Highlanders of the Bogotá Altiplano are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about Ancestry Map, the full Global25 report.

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  Who were the Ancient Highlanders of the Bogotá Altiplano?

  The Ancient Highlanders of the Bogotá Altiplano (c. 100 BCE-800 CE, Laguna de La Herrera, Madrid, Cundinamarca, Colombia) are one of the Iconic discoveries entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 11 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "A 6000-year-long genomic transect from the Bogotá Altiplano".

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  What does "matching" the Ancient Highlanders of the Bogotá Altiplano mean?

  Your Global25 coordinates are compared to the entry's sequenced members and the distance to the closest one is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional reference space the Distance lens uses. A notable entry is one person or one small burial group, not a population average, so distances naturally run larger than population distances.

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  Are they my ancestor?

  No, and no DNA test can show that. A small distance means your genome sits near theirs in a shared reference space: similar ancestry composition, not descent. Ancestrify never claims a notable individual is your ancestor or relative.

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  How do I see my own distance to the Ancient Highlanders of the Bogotá Altiplano?

  Notable Matches is a free lens on every Ancestry Map, never sold separately. Order Ancestry Map, our Global25 analysis (29.99 EUR), and your report ranks your coordinates against the full catalog, with a portrait, dossier and map for every entry. The public demo shows the lens with example data.

The catalog holds every published entry across three tiers. Browse the full Notable Matches directory. Nearby entries:

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