Denisovans (deh-NEE-so-vens, sounds like Denise) were a kind of early man that lived in Asia 250,000 to 40,000 years ago. They are close cousins to the Neanderthals, their counterpart in Europe.
Note: In this post, “we”, “us”, “human” and “people” will mean just our subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens, also known as “anatomically modern humans”.
About 125,000 years ago it went like this:
- Africa: humans
- West Eurasia: Neanderthals
- East Eurasia: Denisovans
Each is a subspecies of Homo sapiens – a true race in the biological sense.
Humans left Africa in two main waves:
- The first wave mated with Neanderthals in South West Asia and with Denisovans in South East Asia. They became the black people of South East Asia (Negritos), Australia (Aboriginals), New Guinea and the other islands of Melanesia. They are now 2.5% Neanderthal, 5% Denisovan.
- The second wave mated only with Neanderthals. There were few if any Denisovans left at that point. This second wave became the light-skinned people native to Europe, Asia and the Americas. They are now 2.5% Neanderthal.
The black people in Africa have no known Neanderthal or Denisovan genes.
Denisovans were discovered in 2008 when part of a finger bone was found in a cave in Siberia. When its DNA was tested, it turned out to be neither human nor Neanderthal but something else.
The finger bone belonged to an eight-year-old girl who died some 41,000 years ago. She may have been among the last of her kind. From her genes we know she had brown eyes, brown hair and dark skin. Two Denisovan teeth, not hers, were found in the same cave. They are big like bear teeth!
So far that is all we have of the Denisovans: No skulls, no skeletons, no tools, no artwork. Some skulls found in China from the same period are being tested for their DNA. That might turn up nothing: bone that old has little readable DNA. The finger bone was an amazing stroke of luck, helped in part by the cold of Siberia and the latest techniques in reading DNA.
Compared to our DNA the main differences have to do with skin, teeth, eyes, brain function and immunity to disease. The immunity genes are probably the ones that have lived on in us.
Denisovan brains were wired differently. They did not talk like us. They might come off as what we would regard as autistic. They might have been bad liars who had a hard time seeing things from another’s point of view.
From the girl’s genes we can work backwards and find out what her parents’s genes were. They were more genetically alike than human parents even though they were not blood relations. Like Neanderthals, it seems Denisovans lacked genetic diversity, probably because they did not leave Africa in huge numbers.
Denisovans split off from our line some 500,000 years ago. By 250,000 years ago they had left Africa and had split off from Neanderthals. They reached their height in numbers 125,000 years ago. By the time humans first saw them they were already dying out.
– Abagond, 2013.
Source: mainly National Geographic (July 2013) and Huffington Post (August 31st 2012).
See also:
We still don’t know why Neanderthals and Denisovans did not survive, do we? Do we know how much humans contributed to that?
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Good Post, Abagond! I love it, you always teach me something new! 🙂
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We have no idea of what the Denisovians looked like but there are several East Eurasian populations that could be the Denisovians:
1. Solo man from Java. Solo man’s skull is an enlarged version of Java man’s;
the average cranial capacity seems to have been about 1150 cc. There
are no facial bones–only some incomplete skulls.
2. The Ma-Pa.Da-Li/Jinniushan people of China. Two of the skulls are
complete; cranial capacities are 1220 and 1400 cc respectively; the latter
is close to the modern average. The skulls are low, thick, and heavy
browed, but the faces are non-projecting and not terribly large.
3. The recently discovered Red Deer Cave people of China; cranial capacities
are within the modern range; the upper face has heavy brow ridges,but
the lower face projects somewhat in the mouth region. The cheekbones
are wide and flaring, but the facial skeletons are not large as they are in
Neanderthals.
4. Flores man. Midgets; very small brains (ape sized); heavy brow ridges and
projecting lower faces; many primitive features in the lower skeleton.
Comparison with Neanderthal man. We have many Neanderthal skulls
because Neanderthals buried their dead just like modern humans. Heavy
brow ridges; large face which projects forward from the bridge of the nose
down (due to enlarged nasal cavity and maxilliary sinuses); “swept back”
cheekbones; no “canine fossa”; semi-elliptical depression above the occipital
torus; weak chin; gap between end of tooth row and vertical part of mandible;
bony projections on either side of nasal cavity.
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Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
Good anthropology. Definitely worth a reblog.
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Interesting, where did you get this information from. I like this post a lot. However I do believe that human life started in Africa and that Africa is the cradle of humanity
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Interesting, where did you get this information from. I like this post a lot.
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Isn’t that what abagond was saying, the Denosivans and Neanderthals both came out from africa…and since Africans have neither of them in their DNA that means they’re the original humans :))
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@ Adeen: This came from National Geographic.
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I think this should immediately be followed by a healthy round of HBD!
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That’s a big tooth. I never heard of denisovans, interesting, makes me wonder how many other species of human there were that we don’t know about. Thanks for the lesson abagond, I don’t keep up on this stuff lol
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Me too Kiwi, ppl act like we’re the odd ones cuz were so different from white people (who are now seen as the standard for being human) even though most ppl have more in common with blacks then they do whites…(dark skin in Asia, central and south america, Indians have full lips, eastern Asians have flat noses, both have thicker hair then whites yet are not as frizzy)…smh!
Cuz were the farthest from whites, we’re attacked the most even though we’re the only pure humans, and whites have more in common with animals than humans…explains why they love to kiss their dogs! (with the same tongue they used to lick their butt)
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1) Sub saharan africans are mixed with another archaic hominid.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15225155
2) Sub saharan Africans have additional chimpanzee DNA others don’t. Since when were chimpanzees considered human?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15225155
3) Whites are not the furthest from blacks. Asians are.
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[…] Denisovans (deh-NEE-so-vens, sounds like Denise) were a kind of early man that lived in Asia 250,000 to 40,000 years ago. They are close cousins to the Neanderthals, their counterpart in Europe. No… […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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“whites have more in common with animals than humans…explains why they love to kiss their dogs! (with the same tongue they used to lick their butt)”—LOL
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I hope they’ll be able to do a facial recognition. I would like to know what these people looked like 🙂
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“Sub saharan Africans have additional chimpanzee DNA others don’t. Since when were chimpanzees considered human?”
– – –
Chimps don’t have to be humans: they and Man are both primates and members of the Great Ape family. It should not be surprising that certain similarities might be discovered between Man and his closest relative, the Chimpanzee. According to your linked article, a particular type of DNA is shared between Chimps and a number of Africans who took part in a study. Also according to the same article, whites don’t carry that same type of DNA because theirs is the result of a genetic mutation which occurred after their ancestors exited Africa.
So, by following your logic, it must be that whites have MUTANT chimpanzee DNA.
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Got ’em! Looool I hate when they say people come from apes…like I know you white ppl love animals and all that, I mean you’re part animal buuuuut…..no.
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Abagond,
Most of the white people in America are very sparsely related to these ancients. I would say Mother India. Most whites in Europe come from Africans that went to India first.
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Have you ever seen an albino Indian. They look like a caucasian.
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The idea that whites are part “animal” is ridiculous. If Neanderthal DNA equals beast hood then that applies to African Americans’ European and Native American ancestors as well.
The taxonomy of Denisovans and Neanderthal is not settled.
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Caffeine & Nicotine
“Also according to the same article, whites don’t carry that same type of DNA because theirs is the result of a genetic mutation which occurred after their ancestors exited Africa.”
That’s not what the article said. The article said that ONLY blacks have that chimpanzee gene. The only way for that to happen is if multiple subspecies evolved with more than one divergence. There must have been at least 3 archaic hominids — neanderthal, denisovan and archaic african as well as the one that became sapiens. Neanderthal went to southwest eurasia, denisovan went to asia and archaic african stayed in africa along with sapiens.
Sapiens then split with one branch staying in africa and assimilating archaic african “x” and the migrating branch assimilating some neanderthal in west eurasia. The west eurasian sapiens then split into the asian and caucasian branches with the asian branch picking up some additional denisovan in asia. To summarize, blacks picked up chimpanzee genes from the other archaic african hominid.
“So, by following your logic, it must be that whites have MUTANT chimpanzee DNA.”
Humans and chimpanzees share 98.5% of their DNA. The remaining 1.5% is all “MUTANT chimpanzee DNA”. It’s the “MUTANT chimpanzee DNA” that makes us human instead of chimpanzees. You have a little less human DNA. But it’s just a little bit so I wouldn’t worry about it if i were you.
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With that said, the first true humans were black Afticans, so the idea that blacks were somehow closer to Homo Erectus or some other proto-human is just as ridiculous. Unfortunately that was a factor in social policy at one time.
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The vast majority of current African-Americans are also part Neanderthal, owing that nearly all are part European, many are part Native American and some are part Asian as well.
Denisovans were also part Neanderthal.
It seems that only certain groups of modern humans share more Denisovan DNA than Neanderthal DNA, and they are mostly in Papua New Guinea, the Malay Archipelago and Australia.
I think it is cool that we are the amalgamation of different species of hominids.
I wonder if it is like how wolves, coyotes, foxes, dingos, jackals and domestic dogs interbreed with each other and produce viable offspring. (Well, I guess that a dog is technically a wolf).
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@Da Jokah The info you cite is not unlike the relationship between modern Whites and the Rhesus monkey and the “rhesus factor” amongst today’s human populace.
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strangevisitor72
You’re mistaken. The Rh Factor gets its name from some experiments involving immunizing rabbits with red blood cells from Rhesus macaque. The antigen that induced this immunization was designated by them as Rh factor “to indicate that rhesus blood had been used for the production of the serum.” Based on the serologic similarities Rh factor was later also used for antigens, and anti-Rh for antibodies, found in humans. Although differences between these two sera were shown already in 1942 and clearly demonstrated in 1963, the already widely used term “Rh” was kept for the clinically described human antibodies which are different from the ones related to the Rhesus monkey.
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Now Whites are claiming that their relation to Neandrathal is the reason they and Asians have advanced so far beyond Africans. So NOW, the African’s humaness is what makes them an inferior being since we are the only pure humans.
Before it was known about White people’s link to Neandrathal man Black people’s state at this time was blamed on the belief that we WEREN’T full humans at all!!! It never ends.
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Amazon aborigines are part Neanderthal, Inuit are part Neanderthal, the Yamanas in Tierra del Fuego were part Neanderthal, Australian Aborigines are part Neanderthal, PPG natives are part Neanderthal. The extinct polynesian islanders in Easter Island were part Neanderthal.
Whites are not uniquely linked to Neanderthals. It doesn’t explain anything.
Chinese were looking for a non-African origin to explain their ancestry. They could not find it. NO, they are not descendant from Peking Man, but from Africans.
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jefe
“Chinese were looking for a non-African origin to explain their ancestry. ”
No one wants to be related to blacks. I wonder why? That reminds me of a story I once read about a chimpanzee that learned sign language. It’s caretaker used sign language to explain that chimpanzees and blacks both came from Africa and had evolved from common ancestors. The chimpanzee signed back, “There must be some mistake.”
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@Jefe
My point was at first we were seen as being inferior because we weren’t viewed as being human enough. Now we’re less than because we are nothing but. It never ends with these people. They are always trying to distance us from the human family, when the reality is we ARE the human family from which all nations spring.
Why can’t they just let this crap die? Probably because their entire sense of self is built around this concept of genetic superiority. By the way, I saw the program where Chinese discovered they too were descendants of Africans. It was on YouTube. Everyone wants to distance themselves from Africans. (To the Chinese), Welcome back home…
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I’m fascinated that you would post this as a practicing Catholic. What about the Scriptural account of Creation?
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I don’t understand why it is so important for non-Africans to distance themselves (at least genetically) so much from Africans when nearly all of their DNA inheritance is right there in Africa. Why the compulsion to trace oneself to an extinct hominid (who obviously did not survive)?
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I may be wrong but at one point 4 types of humans inhabited the earth at tHE same time—?
homo heidelbergensis
neanderthal
denisovan
homo sapiens
…?…….?……..
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On the other hand Ötzi seems to have had significantly MORE Neanderthaler ancestry, which suggests that modern Europeans had significant influx from non/low Neander ancestry people, i.e. Africans!!!
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/neandertal_dna/neandertal-ancestry-iced-2012.html#ref
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I’m a full blood Denisovan in Australia. I am not human.
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Da Jokah – you’re conflating the articles. The article by Kamboh, Sanghera, et al, makes no reference to archaic Africans. It does state, however, that the APOH*3W allele – the one that whites have – is a mutation of APOH*3B (the ones that blacks have).
“This also indicates that the APOH*3W mutation arose on the APOH*3B chromosome, as the APOH*3W allele carries mutations at codons 122, 135 and 316.”
And perhaps I’m reading this wrong, but it seems to me that Table 5 states that there are whites with APOH3*B. The frequency of APOH*3B in white Americans is 0.01; in black Africans, it’s 0.09. Table 5 also says that, by a long shot, most people – whether white American, black African, black American, Hispanic, or Chinese – have neither of these alleles, but APOH*2.
Also, APOH*3B isn’t chimpanzee DNA. The authors specifically say, “Recently, we have reported that the isoelectric point of the chimpanzee β2GPI protein is identical to the human APOH*3 allele…” And again,”…the isoelectric pattern of the human APOH*3 allelic-isoform is identical to the chimpanzee’s wild type APOH allele”. The isoelectric patterns are the same. I am no biologist, and I will gladly take correction, but from what I can puzzle out this means that they have a similar isoelectric point: a point in which the molecules carry no net electric charge. Presumably this means that scientists can, in some mysterious fashion, understand that they are analogous 🙂
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There were 5 or 6 types of humans that inhabited the Earth at the same time:
1. Moderns. Homo Sapiens. Descended from African Homo heidelburgensis.
2. Neanderthal man. Homo neanderthalensis. Descended from European Homo heidelburgensis. Long, low vaulted skull; heavy double arched brow ridges; large face with a “pulled forward” appearance; receeding cheekbones lacking a canine fossa; bony projections inside nasal cavity; long lower jaw with weakly developed chin and gap between end of tooth row and vertical part of lower jaw; stocky and strongly muscled. Large cranial capacity. One specimen had a 1740 cc brain. (Amud I from Israel) Several others around 1600 cc. (La Ferassie, La Chapelle aux Saints from France). Buried their dead and took care of their old people. Europe, Middle East and Central Asia.
3 Denisovians–known only from their DNA. Homo denisoviensis? Siberia.
4. Red Deer cave people. Brain case nearly modern, but with heavy brow ridges; short face; upper part of face tucked neatly under forehead, but upper jaw projects forward; weakly developed chin; wide flaring cheekbones. Almost the opposite of neanderthal man. Could be the Denisovans. China.
5. Solo man. Classic Homo erectus; low thick skull, brow ridges of solid bone tent shaped outline of skull seen from rear. Dating uncertian; once thought to be 40,000 years old, but could be up to 550,000 old and contemprary with pekin man. Java, Indonesia.
6. Flores man; the small “hobbit-like” people of Flores Island. Skull remembles African Homo habilis; brain is chimp or australopithicine sized–average 417cc.
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The ‘negritos’ part of Denisovan genome inheritance which you have mentioned is incorrect. Denisovan genome sharing has only been found in people traditionally living to the East of the Wallace line, which originally was the sea-gap between Sunda (what is now South East Asia) and Sahul (what is now Papua, Australia, Tasmania, Nearby isles like Timor, etc.), suggesting that Denisovan-Human contact, for the ancestors of Indigenous Australians and the peoples of Melanesia at least, first occurred when said ancestors crossed the ocean and entered the Oceanic world – in other words, Denisovans were not present at that time in Asia, but they were in Australia, Papua, Timor, etc. (which, along with the location of the bone finds, suggests some form of pre-contact existence in Central Siberia and also that Denisovans had the technology to cross the ocean).
Tl;dr, ‘Negritos’, i.e. people from the Andamanese Isles, the Philippines, Indochina and even parts of India do NOT have denisovan in their genome. This accounts ONLY for the numerous peoples of Papua and the Oceanic isles such as Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, and people who are indigenous Australian to a lesser extent.
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@ Yoseph
Do you have a reference for that?
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According to a recent study, the closest match to the Denisovians in
terms of DNA are the Sima de los Huesos people from the Atapuerca
mountains of Spain. They are intermediate in form between
Homo heidelburgensis (as represented by the Petralona skull from
Greece, and the Arago hominids from France) and the Neanderthals;
the face has a Neanderthal look, but the back of the skull is more like
heidelburgensis. A DNA study was also done on the Teshik-Tash
child from Uzbekistan–and it falls squarely within the Neanderthal
range of variation, thus demonstrating that the Neanderthals did
make it into central Asia, and that the “Neanderthal like” populations
in western Asia–Teshik Tash, Shanidar, Tabun, Amud, Kebara,
Dederiyeh–were true Neanderthals and not merely individuals that
superficially resembled Neanderthals. They were probably emigrants
from Europe; just because Neanderthals may have been somewhat
cold-adapted does not have to mean they LIKED the cold.
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I stumbled on a (tangentially) related article a few days ago and thought this was the best place to stick it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7997861/New-study-shows-ghost-DNA-modern-day-population-west-Africa.html
Who were the ghost people of Africa? DNA reveals ancient Africans bred with new unknown race of humans just 50,000 years ago
There’s a bit more at the link, I won’t copy everything.
So they used a computerized genetic analysis technique to come to their conclusion that West Africans have some DNA from a source that they can’t quite trace, which is why they’re calling it “ghost” DNA. I must admit, “ghost DNA” sounds kind of X-files, lol.
That brought back something to my memory, which I’ll post below.
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Years ago I started researching what various people said bout their own origins. Seeing the article above made my thoughts go back to this group from the Kongo in Africa which said:
https://bundu-dia-kongo.org/history/pre-history.html
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Such extra-terrestrial themes as above are actually not that uncommon in myth.
This is a diagram associated with the article from my first post.
It is not that far from what the Kongo story suggests in terms of genetic input from another population taking West Africans along a different lineage. Obviously, careful scientists, who expect to be peer reviewed, aren’t going to make unsupportable claims about that population (hence the “ghost” designation).
So that article about “ghost DNA” made me consider that we don’t know what we don’t know. Gaps in knowledge are invisible by their very nature. We’re only cognizant of them in hindsight. From our current place of (essential) amnesia and ignorance, the facts about the human story are shrouded in mystery.
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The diagram I referred to above didn’t show up.
Here:
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It was aliens!
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@Herneith
cue X-files music
Cha-cha-cha ching chi-ching chi-ching
Woo wee woo waa wee waa
What a twist eh?
The aliens are human.
heh
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