We know frustratingly little about the geographic distribution and demography of the Denisovans, except for the head-scratching finding that Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans are the only people alive today with substantial amounts of Denisovan DNA in their genome. ...“We would like to know a great deal more about Denisovans. But I think it’s important to know that just like the Neanderthals were known from Western Europe and the Near East, the Denisovans were a similar and closely related species that was found across a huge part of Asia,” University of Illinois paleoanthropologist and study co-author Laura Shackelford said. Genome studies have shown that our species, Homo sapiens, interbred with Denisovans as recently as 30,000 years ago. As a result, some modern people share about 5 percent of their DNA with Denisovans including Indigenous populations in Papua New Guinea, Australia and the Philippines, with smaller DNA percentages among the broader Southeast Asian populations. “This discovery [of the molar] is particularly important as it is the first direct evidence of the presence of Denisovans in Southeast Asia,” said Eske Willerslev, director of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre and a study co-author.
A common ancestor to Denisovans, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens is thought to have lived in Africa 700,000 to 500,000 years ago, with a branch that led to Denisovans and Neanderthals splitting off 470,000 to 380,000 years ago. Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago, then spread worldwide.
By 200,000 years ago, four different archaic human species inhabited Asia including the Denisovans, Homo erectus, and diminutive island-dwelling peoples called Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis. Our species then joined the fray.
Scientists have been searching in northeastern Laos for decades for prehistoric human remains. The cave bearing the tooth was situated near another where 70,000-year-old Homo sapiens remains were found."
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