Our ancestors didn't just have inter-species sex with Neanderthals. A new DNA study has found that our forefathers interbred with another mysterious group of hominins, the Denisovans.
Now, researchers have found two distinct modern human genomes - one from Oceania and another from East Asia - both have distinct Denisovan ancestry.
The genomes are also completely different, suggesting there were at least two separate waves of prehistoric intermingling between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago.
In a paper published in Cell on March 15, scientists at the University of Washington studied more than 5,600 whole-genome sequences from individuals from Europe, Asia, America, and Oceania and detected Denisovan DNA in Han Chinese, Chinese Dai, and Japanese populations.
“Although the Papuans ended up with more Denisovan ancestry, it turns out to be less similar to the sequenced Denisovan,” Browning explained. The study also indicates that there were at least two distinct populations of Denisovans living in Asia.
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