Denisova Cave

Until last night, when insomnia prompted me to turn on the National Geographic Channel in the middle of the night, I had never heard of the extinct hominins species called the Denisovans. DNA evidence of this population was found in a tiny bone recovered in 2010 from a cave in south central Siberia. In the program I learned not only that the area had once been in habited by both early modern humans and Neanderthals, but also that genetic evidence from modern human populations indicate that the Denisovans, like the Neanderthals, had interbred with the early modern humans. I was curious about the location of this cave, so I found it on Google Earth, and have attached the placemark I made below.

While editing this post in 2023, I accidently deleted the video embedded in it. When I searched for its URL to replace it, I found several more recent ones, including this one. It contains much more up-to-date information than the one from 8 years ago.

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LOL @ 5:45 in the video. Women... ya gotta love 'em.

The program I saw on Na-shun-ji-o (as they call the National Geographic Channel here in Japan) was not available on You Tube, and is way, way too long for a post, anyway. It would probably be a bit sexist of me to call any woman who could write "Dr." in front of her name a ditsy blonde, but I did think that both the passage you referred to, and her assumption that the fact that she lived in Australia meant that she had about 5 per cent Denisovan DNA, suggested that she was not listening very carefully during her interviews. I picked that video to insert in the post because it was more attention-grabbing and less technical than the one I put in the placemark. This presentation by Svante Pääbo, (the person most responsible for this research, and who was briefly interviewed by Dr. Newby) makes an interesting point (at about 27:30). Men sometimes self-identify as suspecting they have Neanderthal genes. Women never do. But they sometimes offer up their husbands as possible inheritors. Go figure.

I don't suppose that most will find the topic sufficiently interesting to sit through this longish video, but on the off chance that you are not the only one willing to muck about in the technical details of Dr. Pääbo's presentation, I'll post it here rather than sending you a link by PM.

Jun 19, 2015 8:18:00 GMT washi said:

... her assumption that the fact that she lived in Australia meant that she had about 5 per cent Denisovan DNA, suggested that she was not listening very carefully during her interviews.

I caught that too. They're obviously talking about Aboriginal Australians. Dr. Ditsy is a former veterinarian [source] which doesn't qualify her in the field of biology/evolution.

She won a prize in science journalism, which really surprises me in light of the gaffs in this video.

I watched Dr. Pääbo's lecture and enjoyed every minute of it. Thanks for posting that washi. This is a topic (our origins) that I find fascinating.