What Happened When Denisovans Met Neanderthals?

This video examines how new information about ancient DNA is changing our understanding of human evolution and ancient history. The study of fossils is helping us understand human origins. New insights into geography are coming from the study of ancient humans.

One of the most extraordinary discoveries in paleoanthropology—the teenage girl known as Denisova 11, who was half Neanderthal and half Denisovan—was not simply a quirk of chance. Her existence was the direct outcome of the relentless rhythms of glacial and interglacial cycles that pressed populations of Neanderthals and Denisovans into contact. These cycles shifted forests, grasslands, and ice sheets across Eurasia, alternately separating and then reuniting groups that had once been isolated. In their oscillations lay the key to encounters that produced one of the most remarkable hybrids ever found in the human fossil record.

SOURCES:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...