For a long time, scientists believed that Neanderthals were the last prehistoric relative of modern humans to die out. But when the piece of bone found in 2008 was analyzed, it turned out to belong to a previously unknown type of human.
The researchers examined the genome and compared it with DNA from living people. They found that as much as 5-6 percent of the genes in the population of Papua New Guinea came from the Denisovan. This can be compared to 1-3 percent of Europeans’ genes coming from Neanderthals.
Protection against diseases
The researchers managed to identify around 400 genes from the Denisovan. One of the genes identified appears to give the population of Papua New Guinea better protection against certain diseases, another increased ability to live on an almost entirely plant-based diet.
It also turned out that the Denisovans were in contact with Homo sapiens much later than previously thought.
– We thought that the Neanderthals were the last to die out, but it seems that the Denisovan lived almost 15,000 years after the Neanderthal died out, says the anthropologist François-Xavier Ricaut in the World of Science: The Denisovan Man Revealed.
More knowledge is needed
Finds from the new human type have since been made in several parts of the world, but there are still too few finds to be able to say anything about how they lived.
Using the genetic material in the small finger fragment from the cave, researchers have now succeeded in creating a 3D image of what the 40,000-year-old girl might have looked like.
See the picture in the clip above.
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