A group of enigmatic ancient humans called the Denisovans thrived in what is now south-west China for more than 100,000 years. They lived in a conifer forest and hunted large animals like deer. It is the first evidence of Denisovans in this region, and one of the only known sites with artefacts that can tell us about how they lived.
For the first time, “we can know their technology and know their subsistence strategy”, says Hao Li, an archaeologist at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing. The new site is only the third Denisovan locale “where we have everything”, says Bence Viola at the University of Toronto in Canada, who wasn’t involved in the study. Denisovans may have dwarfed other ancient humans The Denisovans were hominins that lived in East Asia within the past few hundred thousand years.
They were first identified 16 years ago from DNA preserved in a finger bone in Denisova cave. A smattering of other Denisovan remains have since been found elsewhere in East Asia, including Harbin in northern China. However, for almost all of these remains, it is impossible to study their archaeological context – particularly in the case of Denisovan remains dredged from the sea floor.
Because of this, we have little information about the tools and other artefacts they made. The new finds come from Bianfu cave in Yunnan province. The area has been heavily quarried, destroying much of the cave, including the entrance, but in 2019 local workers spotted animal fossils and alerted the authorities.
This led Li and his colleagues to conduct a rescue excavation that summer. They dug three trenches to a depth of 6.6 metres, revealing 18 layers of sediment – of which 10 contained artefacts made by hominins. One of these layers yielded four intact hominin teeth.
The excavation also unearthed over 64,000 fragments of bone. To find out whether any belonged to hominins, a team led by Qiaomei Fu at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing first went through them by hand. The researchers identified 22 potential hominin remains, which they subjected to molecular analysis.
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