2025/119: The Secret World of Denisovans — Silvana Condemi, François Savatier, Holly James

2025/119: The Secret World of Denisovans — Silvana Condemi, François Savatier (translated by Holly James)

While Neanderthals found themselves confined to a small, freezing territory during glacial maximums, Denisovans continued to thrive across an immense continent that had expanded due to decreasing sea levels, and still had enough exchanges with their northern relatives to maintain their genetic diversity. [loc. 1844]

Subtitled 'The Epic Story of the Ancient Cousins to Sapiens and Neanderthals', this is an accessible overview of current paleoanthropology as it relates to the Denisovans -- a human species who went extinct around 25,000 years ago, but whose DNA persists in Asian and Oceanic populations. Condemi is a paleoanthropologist, Savatier is a journalist: between them they have produced a very readable text, with boxed sections for the more technical or theoretical aspects of the story.

And it is a story: from the 2010 identification of the new species from DNA in a single finger-bone found in a remote Siberian cave, to ongoing debate about whether the Denisovans were indeed a separate species ( Read more... )