A Twist in Our Sexual Encounters With Other Ancient Humans
Around 41,000 years ago, a young woman died in a cold cave, high up in Siberia’s Altai Mountains. Scientists uncovered one of her pinky bones in 2008. From it, they extracted her DNA. And from that, they deduced that she belonged to a previously unknown group of ancient hominin, whom they called the Denisovans after the cave where the finger was found.
To this date, we have no idea what a Denisovan looked like. You can still hold every known Denisovanaround 600,000 years ago. We know that when our ancestors left Africa and spread into Asia, they encountered the Denisovans and had sex with them. We know that, as a result, Denisovan DNA lives on in people from Asia and Melanesia. One of these Denisovan genes provides with a crucial adaptation that allows them to survive at high altitudes.
