Prehistoric Jomon Hunter-Gatherers Were One Of The Only Groups Outside Africa With Nearly No Denisovan DNA

Pleistocene humans were more than happy to get into bed with Neanderthals and Denisovans, which is why most of us now carry DNA from these extinct species. However, there’s one group of prehistoric people in Japan that appears to have missed out on all the inter-hominin debauchery, giving rise to an ancient community with strangely low levels of Denisovan ancestry. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Unlike Neanderthal DNA – which is uniformly spread across all modern non-African populations – Denisovan ancestry is somewhat patchy, with Oceanians and island Southeast Asians inheriting around four percent of their genomes from this ancient lineage, while other Eurasian and Native American communities have about 0.2 percent