The closest relatives of the Neanderthals - the oldest representatives of Homo Sapiens - lived in Siberia before its territory was settled by modern humans, who later migrated to Melanesia.
In the Altai Territory, the remains of an ancient man were discovered, which scientists consider to be a representative of a previously unknown species of primates.
These are the conclusions reached by anthropologists who studied the genome, which was preserved in two tissue samples - the phalangeal bone of the finger and the molar, previously discovered in the Denisova Cave of the Altai Territory.
The open species of bipedal primates originated from a group of people of the archaic type who left Africa about 300 - 400 thousand years ago, which then quickly split into at least two parts, and one of them gave rise to the Neanderthals who inhabited Europe, while the second went to Siberia.
Earlier, the same group of authors reported on the deciphering of the so-called mitochondrial DNA extracted from the same bone of the phalanx of the finger. Then the scientists noted the difference between this short DNA molecule, inherited only through the maternal line, from that of Neanderthals and modern people, which prompted them to decipher the complete genome. The analysis was carried out in Germany by specialists from the Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology. Max Planck.
“The new species of people, which we call“Denisovans”, has not yet received its official name, because this requires more data on the structure of its body. Nevertheless, we can say that the common ancestor of the Neanderthals and Denisovans, whose genomes have been studied to date, lived about 640 thousand years ago.
Only one living people, the inhabitants of Melanesia, have common genetic traits (4% - 6%) with the Denisovans, while all other modern people, except Africans, have somewhere from 1% to 4% of the Neanderthal genome, said one of the co-authors of the publication in the publication Nature, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Deputy Director of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the SB RAS Mikhail Vasilyevich Shunkov.