People across Asia and Oceania carry DNA from at least three different Denisovan populations. A 200,000-year-old man from Siberia helps reveal how those ancient encounters shaped living people.

His DNA comes from a molar found at Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains. The genome suggests a small community of roughly 50–60 people, with about one newcomer per generation. These are demographic model estimates, not a counted settlement.

He was also mixed: an estimated 3.6–5.2% of his DNA came from Neanderthals. Later Denisovans at the cave belonged to a different population and carried a different history of Neanderthal mixing. The evidence points to local population turnover, not the disappearance of all Denisovans.

The modern legacy is even more surprising. South Asians and Oceanians share ancestry from a Denisovan branch more distant than the two high-quality Siberian genomes. Yet the DNA-segment patterns suggest their ancestors inherited that contribution through separate encounters.

The authors propose that an early wave of modern humans passed through South Asia toward Oceania, followed by ancestors of present-day South Asians. East Asians lack the same deeply divergent component in this analysis and show stronger connections to a northern Denisovan branch, suggesting a possible northern arrival route.

Estimated Denisovan mixing dates are roughly 50,000–39,000 years ago for South Asians and 44,000–35,000 for East Asians. They cannot be assigned neatly to each separate Denisovan component.

Small Denisovan traces even appear in Europeans, probably passed on through contact with Asian populations rather than local encounters with Denisovans.

This is a preprint. The routes and ancient contact zones remain hypotheses, and “three groups” describes contributions across populations—not three equal ancestry blocks in everyone.

📚 Source: Peyrégne et al. (2025), bioRxiv (preprint)
A high-coverage genome from a 200,000-year-old Denisovan

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