The Secret World of Denisovans The Epic Story of the Ancient Cousins to Sapiens and Neanderthals

About this book

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 third 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? Palaeoanthropologist Silvana Condemi and science journalist François Savatier tell the Denisovans' story The Secret World of Denisovans. Leading us through the excavation of the 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 ancient ancestors than we might think.

Originally published in French in 2024 as L'Enigme Denisova by Albin Michel.

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

Customer Reviews

Biography

Silvana Condemi, a world-leading palaeoanthropologist, is the research director of CNRS, the largest French public scientific research organization, at Aix-Marseille University.

François Savatier is a journalist for the magazine Pour la Science (the French edition of Scientific American), where he focuses on the science of the past. They are the authors of A Pocket History of Human Evolution (The Experiment, 2019).