Of course the native Americans won't scream for the re-burial of this find like they did with Kennewick Man, because this re-affirms the theory that their ancestors were the first people in the Americas, which may or may not be true. Alaskan soil is acidic and destroys skeletons and DNA, so the whole story has yet to be told.

The Upward_Sun_River_site is on land belonging to the state of Alaska and is not subjected to NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) although in the spirit of NAGPRA, Tribal consultation guidelines developed under the law were followed to initiate dialogue between scientists and local tribal leadership (see Tanana Chief's conference).

Genotype SNP mapping has in the past shown that '4 populations from northern North America show highly significant evidence of ancestry from additional streams of gene flow from Asia, subsequent to the initial peopling of America'

https://www.ncbi....3615710/

https://www.ncbi....85f1.jpg

Film clips of villagers of Healy Lake, Alaska from 1939.
https://www.youtu...ZalIwsRg

UAF scientists describing the find in 2011.
https://www.youtu...kbeeuSrI

"We cannot prove that those claims are not true, but what we are saying, is that if they are correct, they could not possibly have been the direct ancestors to contemporary Native Americans."

The statement is meaningless like the whole article. They actually backdated genetic evidence that came 11K years ago to the 20K years ago but people were in the Americas long before that.

Your statement is meaningless like the whole comment. They did not "backdate" the evidence - its age is clearly stated - but did a genetic analysis of coalescence [ https://en.wikipe...t_theory ] based on the gene material. Like any good biologist would do.