Thanks to DNA preserved in the artifact, researchers have determined that a tooth pendant found in southern Siberia's Denisova Cave belonged to a lady who lived between 19,000 and 25,000 years ago.

The DNA of the owner of a deer-tooth jewelry that was buried in a remote Siberian cave for tens of thousands of years has been found by a group of researchers located in Germany.

It is believed that the antique jewelry, which was discovered in southern Siberia's Denisova Cave, belonged to a woman who lived between 19,000 and 25,000 years ago.

The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology's Elena Essel claims that she and her colleagues created and applied a novel method to extract DNA from an artifact.

Archaeologists are now able to retrieve genetic evidence of ancient humans from the physical artifacts they have left behind after their deaths. This process is inspired by how police solve crimes using "touch DNA," or, to put it another way, utilizing DNA left over after a person touches an object.

Before the development of this new method, scholars could only connect an artifact to a person if they had been buried wearing it. The new technique will make it possible to determine the biological sex and genetic heritage of the person who previously owned or worn a certain item.

However, because teeth and bones are porous enough to absorb human DNA from contact with bodily fluids like blood, sweat, and saliva, the new DNA extraction method can currently only be used to identify who used specific artifacts in daily life. Fortunately for scholars, however, the bones and teeth of animals and, on occasion, humans were commonly employed in ancient times in the construction of ordinary tools, religious objects, and jewelry, like this pendant. This was due to a scarcity of easily available materials thousands of years ago.

According to our hypothesis, the likelihood that a significant amount of DNA is present in the substance increases with the length of intimate body contact... However, we are unsure of whether we are talking about days, months, years, or decades," Essel says.

These researchers, who have been fascinated by the Denisova Cave for decades, have made a significant finding using the information they have gleaned from the tooth pendant.

Along with Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and another extinct human species known as Denisovans have all lived there in the past. The cave is the key to a wealth of knowledge about our prehistoric predecessors for the study team.

It was discovered that the tooth belonged to a wapiti deer, or an elk, thanks to the novel procedure that allowed the researchers to recover the DNA of the animal. They recovered human DNA from the tooth's pores using the same technique, concluding that the genetic material came from a girl whose ancestry is most akin to Native Americans and Siberians who lived farther east than the cave.

With the use of science, they were also able to estimate the pendant's construction date, which coincided with earlier investigations into the radiocarbon dating of the layer of cave floor silt where the artifact was found.

Archaeologists are now able to comprehend historical cultures with a level of depth that has never before been feasible thanks to the DNA technology, which represents a significant advancement in ancient world studies.

Marie Soressi, a co-author from the Netherlands' Leiden University, explained the significance of the discovery as follows: It's incredible. It implies that we'll be able to respond to really basic queries like what jobs men and women were performing at the time. We'll have concrete evidence to support our claims.