The fact that her mother was “Neanderthal” and her father was “Denisovan” is meaningful to us — it tells us something profound about the structure of the ancient human world and about the biological boundaries (or lack thereof) between ancient human lineages.

But to Denny herself, those categories would have been meaningless.

She simply existed, in the world as she found it, with the parents she had.

This is a reminder that our scientific categories — useful as they are for making sense of ancient human diversity — are not the lived experience of the ancient people they describe.

The Neanderthals did not think of themselves as Neanderthals.

The Denisovans did not think of themselves as Denisovans.