Who Were the Denisovans?

In October 2026 researchers reported in Nature that skulls and teeth from Xujiayao in northern China belonged to Denisovans, and described what their heads looked like. This film tells how this lost group of humans was discovered from a finger bone in a Siberian cave in 2010, how ancient DNA and ancient proteins identify them, how their genes live on in people from New Guinea to Tibet, how fossils from the Tibetan Plateau, Laos and Harbin were linked to them, and what is still unknown.

The cousins we met through their DNA

Who the Denisovans were, and how we know.

A finger bone

A new kind of human, found in a lab.

Reading old molecules

DNA where it survives, proteins where it does not.

In our genes

The Denisovans never fully disappeared.

Across Asia

From Siberia to the edge of Southeast Asia.

Almost a face

What the skulls show, and what they cannot.

Read the full story as text · อ่านภาษาไทย

This interactive 3D film needs JavaScript. PlanetPast home