And what she was — a child of two worlds, born in the mountains of Siberia 90,000 years ago — is one of the most surprising and most illuminating facts about the ancient human world that science has ever discovered.

Returning To The Bone

The fragment of bone is in a storage facility in Leipzig.

It is 2.5 centimeters of ancient limb bone, worn and broken, the color of old ivory.

It sits in a small container with a catalogue number and a label.

The label gives the site (Denisova Cave), the specimen number (Denisova 11), and the date of excavation (2012).

It does not say what the bone contains, what it proved, what it changed.