The Ancient Girl Whose DNA Revealed Her Parents Were Two Different Human Species

The cave opens into the limestone cliff face, its interior dark and cool.

In this landscape, 90,000 years ago, people lived.

Neanderthals occupied these mountains, following the same logic that all mobile hunter-gatherers follow: where is the food, where is the shelter, where is the water?

Denisovans occupied the same landscape, with perhaps a longer established relationship to the specific territory.

And at some point, in some specific encounter that we will never be able to precisely locate or characterize, a Neanderthal woman and a Denisovan man had a child in this landscape.

That child was Denny.