Forget everything you thought you knew about human evolution. Archaeologists just Discovered Who really Lived in Denisova Cave in Siberia. Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains was home to archaic humans for a quarter-million years, including Denisovans, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. The question is, who lived there when and in what order?
Denisova Cave is a crossroads of human evolution, deep in Siberia's Altai Mountains. Over tens of thousands of years, it was inhabited by various hominin species, not necessarily in this order: Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and, of course, Denisovans - the elusive group discovered only recently at this site.
Denisovans are an ancient human group. The genetic analysis of a tooth and a tiny finger bone discovered in Denisova Cave in Siberia's Altai mountains provided our first tantalizing glimpse of the Denisovans. The fossil record of these mysterious humans is extremely limited, with only four fragments of bone and teeth and a jawbone discovered in Tibet.