They are the product of convergence — of multiple ancient human lineages merging through interbreeding over the course of the past 100,000 years or more.

The neat family tree that represents human evolution in textbooks — with modern humans on one branch, Neanderthals on another, Denisovans on yet another — is a simplification of a reality that was messier, more connected, and more biologically integrated than the diagram suggests.

Denny is the most vivid single expression of that messy reality.

She was the convergence, in one individual, of two lineages that had been diverging for hundreds of thousands of years.

She lived, she died, and her DNA survived to tell us what she was.