Brian Stauffer
TODAY, there is only one species of human alive on the planet. But it wasn’t always so. For millions of years, and until surprisingly recently, there were many types of human-like groups, or “hominins”. They coexisted, perhaps they fought, and they interbred. It would be fascinating to know how these others lived, but understanding who they were and what they were like is extremely challenging. We cannot put ourselves into their minds, and we have only fragmentary clues from fossils and artefacts they left behind to reconstruct their lives.
That challenge is especially daunting for one of these extinct groups, the Denisovans. Discovered just a decade ago, the Denisovans have left us scant physical evidence. Instead, our knowledge of them comes almost entirely from their preserved DNA. It tells us that they are a sister group to the Neanderthals, that they lived in Asia for hundreds of thousands of years and that they interbred with our species. But we don’t know what they looked like, how they walked or if they could speak.
Now, that is changing. In the past few years, archaeologists have alighted on a few fossils that seem to be Denisovan. They have also unearthed treasure troves of artefacts, including tools, jewellery and even art, that they think were created by these mysterious people. These interpretations are potentially explosive, so it is hardly surprising that some dispute them. Nevertheless, we are starting to piece together a picture of the Denisovans, one of our closest cousins, and a group that still lives on in the DNA of many people today.
The discovery of the Denisovans came as…
