Denisovan DNA

Digs & Discoveries January/February 2013

SHARE:

A new technique for sequencing ancient DNA has allowed a multinational research team to reconstruct the genome of a person who lived in Siberia’s Denisova Cave between 30,000 and 82,000 years ago—with the same level of accuracy as genomes from modern people. This new DNA sequence gives researchers a clearer picture of how early hominins such as the Denisovans and Neanderthals were related to modern humans and to each other. 

 

The analysis showed that Denisovans were much more closely related to Neanderthals than to Homo sapiens, and that in spite of coming from a small population, they managed to contribute genes to modern populations in Island Southeast Asia and Australia. According to David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School and a member of the research team, the new DNA sequence also shows that Native Americans and people from East Asia have more Neanderthal DNA, on average, than Europeans. Archaeologists have long thought that the largest population of Neanderthals lived in Europe, so the finding complicates the picture of the way modern people and Neanderthals are related. Either there was a separate event in which Neanderthals interbred with people in Asia, or the genetic contribution of Neanderthals in Europe was diluted by later migrations of Homo sapiens

  • Features January/February 2013

    Neolithic Europe’s Remote Heart

    One thousand years of spirituality, innovation, and social development emerge from a ceremonial center on the Scottish archipelago of Orkney

    Read Article
    Adam Stanford/Aerial Cam
  • Features January/February 2013

    The Water Temple of Inca-Caranqui

    Hydraulic engineering was the key to winning the hearts and minds of a conquered people

    Read Article
    Caranqui-opener
    (Courtesy Tamara L. Bray)
  • Letter from France January/February 2013

    Structural Integrity

    Nearly 20 years of investigation at two rock shelters in southwestern France reveal the well-organized domestic spaces of Europe's earliest modern humans

    Read Article
  • Artifacts January/February 2013

    Pacific Islands Trident

    A mid-nineteenth-century trident illustrates a changing marine ecosystem in the South Pacific

    Read Article
    (Catalog Number 99071 © The Field Museum, [CL000_99071_Overall], Photographer Christopher J. Philipp)