For 15 years, scientists had the DNA of a lost kind of human, but almost no bones and no face. Then the bones started turning up: in a well, in a monk’s cave, in a fisherman’s net, and in collections where they had been sitting since the 1970s.
This is the story of the Denisovans, and why millions of people alive today still carry their DNA.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The lost humans
0:36 A bone from a pinky tip
2:04 Their DNA is still in us
3:14 Denny: the girl with two kinds of parents
4:07 The gift from the mountains
4:36 A monk, a cave and a jawbone
5:30 The face hidden in a well
6:39 Pulled from the sea
7:05 2026: they were in the collections all along
8:38 The aha
9:10 The open question
SOURCES
– Krause et al. 2010, Nature: mitochondrial DNA of the Denisova finger bone
– Reich et al. 2010, Nature: genetic history of an archaic group from Denisova Cave
– Larena et al. 2021, Current Biology: Philippine Ayta and Denisovan ancestry
– Slon et al. 2018, Nature: the genome of “Denny” (Neanderthal mother, Denisovan father)
– Huerta-Sánchez et al. 2014, Nature: EPAS1 and high-altitude adaptation in Tibetans
– Chen et al. 2019, Nature: the Xiahe mandible from the Tibetan Plateau
– Fu et al. 2025, Science and Cell: the Harbin cranium identified as Denisovan
– Tsutaya et al. 2025, Science: a male Denisovan mandible from Taiwan (Penghu 1)
– Peyrégne et al. 2025, bioRxiv (preprint, not yet peer-reviewed): high-coverage genome from a 200,000-year-old Denisovan
– Fu group (IVPP), Nature, Sept 2026: Bianfu Cave, Yunnan
– Xing et al. 2026, Nature: “The proteome of Middle Pleistocene Xujiayao and common Denisovan morphology”
Illustrations and narration were created with AI tools. Script researched from the sources above and independently fact-checked.
New Aha Files every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
#Denisovans #HumanEvolution #Archaeology
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