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In December 2010, scientists discovered a fragment of a finger bone in an isolated cave in Siberia. To their surprise, the bone contained neither
Homo sapiens nor Neanderthal DNA. The DNA came from a previously unknown species of hominids-the Denisovans-who shared a common ancestor with both Neanderthals and
Homo sapiens.This discovery reshaped everything we thought we knew about the "out of Africa" theory. Scientists initially believed that
Homo erectus inhabited much of Asia, but looking at Denisovan fossils and the genealogy of native populations in the Philippines reveals that the Denisovans made up a vast population, occupying much of East Asia and Oceania.
But who were the Denisovans? How did they live? What did they look like? Paleoanthropologist Silvana Condemi and science journalist François Savatier tell the Denisovans' story in
The Secret World of Denisovans. Leading us through the excavation of Denisova cave, the sequencing of the Denisovan genome, and recent research on Denisovan fossils, Condemi and Savatier uncover how the Denisovans migrated to Asia, who they interacted with along the way, and why traces of Denisovan DNA can be found in modern-day humans. By studying the story of the Denisovans, we can better understand how humans evolved and populated the globe-and how we are more closely related to our prehistoric ancestors than we might think.
List of contents
- Prologue
- Part 1: The Third Men
- The Enigma
- In the Denisova Cave
- Denisova, a Human Species?
- Denisova Through Its Genes
- An Immense Empire in the East
- Part 2: Origins
- Before Denisova: The Strange Homo erectus
- The Earth System, Home to Denisova?
- Denisova, Sons of Crossbreeding
- The Ancestor of Denisova and Neanderthal
- Heading East
- The Bamboo Empire
- Part 3: In the Denisova Skin
- Portrait of Denisova
- In Search of Lost Denisovan Fossils
- Denisova's Body and Face Are Back!
- Living Denisova
- Bibliography
- Credits
- List of Infographics
- Acknowledgments
About the author
Silvana Condemi, a world-leading paleoanthropologist, is the research director of CNRS, the largest French public scientific research organization, at Aix-Marseille University. She is the co-author of A Pocket History of Human Evolution and The Secret World of Denisovans.
