Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravelin 2025.
Analysis of DNA extracted from the fossil electrified the scientific community in 2010, when it revealed a previously unknown human population that had, in the distant past, encountered and interbred with our own species, Homo sapiens. This enigmatic group became known as the Denisovans after Denisova Cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains, where the pinkie finger was found.
Despite intimate knowledge of this population’s genetic makeup, traces of which millions of people carry today, scientists knew nothing about the appearance of the Denisovans, or where they lived or why they disappeared. The discovery, and the questions it unleashed, galvanized a generation of geneticists, archaeologists and paleoanthropologists.
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