In fact, Denny’s mother’s Neanderthal ancestry was more similar to Neanderthal populations from Western Europe and Croatia than to the Altai Neanderthals represented by Denisova 5.

This is a fascinating finding.

It implies that Denny’s Neanderthal mother — or at least her ancestors — came from a western Neanderthal population that had, at some point, migrated eastward to the Altai region.

They had traveled, or their ancestors had traveled, from the western heartland of Neanderthal territory all the way to the mountains of Siberia.

This migration is consistent with what the broader genetic evidence for Neanderthal population structure suggests: that there were multiple distinct Neanderthal populations across their range, and that there was gene flow — migration, or at least occasional long-distance encounters — between these populations.

The Altai Neanderthals, as represented by Denisova 5, appear to have had some genetic input from western populations, suggesting that the Neanderthal range was not simply a collection of isolated, static populations but a dynamic system in which genes could flow from west to east over time.