Scientific discovery: Denisovan man, brother of Neanderthal and sapiens

A tiny piece of finger bone no larger than a child’s fingernail, discovered in a cave in the Altai massif: in December 2010, humanity was presented with an extraordinary gift. Because inside, researchers found unknown human DNA. Neither sapiens, like us, nor Neanderthals, like our relatives, nor… a Martian, this genome did not indicate the existence of a hitherto unknown human species. They named it Denisova, after the name of the cave. Who are they? Where did they come from? How did they live? Marseille paleoanthropologist Silvane Condemi and science journalist François Savatier conducted an investigation back at the dawn of time. In my new job Denisov’s riddle. (Albin Michel), science is knocking on the door of philosophy.

Why is this discovery unusual?

First, we had to find this tiny fragment of bone in tons of sediment from the excavation site and identify it as human remains! The Max Planck Institute in Leipzig then managed to extract DNA from it, and for the first time in the history of paleoanthropology, a new humanity was discovered by genetics. Genetics have already made it possible to detect Neanderthal genes in current human populations (about 2%), which, contrary to popular belief, proves that our Homo sapiens ancestors interbred with their Neanderthal cousins. A real paradigm shift!