We use cookies to improve your experience on our site and to show you personalised advertising. To find out more, read our privacy policy and cookie policy

Skip to Content
University of Wollongong Australia. Logo. University of Wollongong Australia. Logo. University of Wollongong Australia. Logo.
  • Search
  • Give
  • Library
  • Current Students
  • Staff
  • UOW Global
    • Our global presence
    • UOW in Dubai
    • UOW in Hong Kong
    • UOW in Malaysia
  • Menu
  • Study at UOW

    • Courses
    • Apply
    • Scholarships & grants
    • Accommodation
    • High-school students
    • Non-school leavers
    • Postgraduate students
    • International students
    • Moving to Wollongong
    • Study abroad & exchange
    • Global sport programs
    • Campuses
    Study at UOW
  • Engage

    • Future student
    • Alumni
    • Visit UOW
    • Woolyungah Indigenous Centre
    • Volunteer
    • The Stand Magazine
    • Community Members
    • Grants and funding
    • Give to UOW
    • Visit the Library
    • Key contacts
    • Educators & school teachers
    Engage with us
  • About UOW

    • Welcome
    • Our people
    • Services
    • Contacts
    • What's on
    • Global presence
    • Media Centre
    • Faculties & schools
    • Our vision & strategy
    • Our Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Strategy
    • Our reputation & experience
    • Locations, campuses & partners
    See more about UOW
  • Research

    • Our research
    • Researcher support
    • Research impact
    • Partnership & collaboration
    • Graduate Research School
    • Commercial research
    • Global Challenges
    • Media, news & events
    • Find an expert
    • Our people
    See more about research
  • Industry

    • Generator Lab
    • Advantage SME
    • Success stories
    • Industry research engagement
    • Equipment & Labs
    • Funding opportunities
    • Intellectual property
    • Collaboration for business
    • Collaboration for researchers
    • Careers and employability
    See more about Industry
  • Alumni

    • Benefits
    • Outlook Magazine
    • Events & webinars
    • Volunteer
    • Awards
    • Honorary alumni
    • Testamurs & transcripts
    • Update your details
    • Your career journey
    • Contact us & FAQ
    See more about alumni
  • Quick links

    • Contact directory
    • Staff Intranet
    • Campus maps
    • Transport & parking
    • Key dates
    • Events
    • Password management
    • Jobs
    • Accommodation
    • Policy directory
  • Library
You are here More Pages
  • Home
  • About UOW
  • Media Centre
  • 2021
  • DNA from sediment reveals epic history of Denisova Cave

Media Quick Links

  • Contact UOW Media
  • Visiting campus
  • Image library
  • UOW key facts
  • Find an expert
  • News Corp subscription
  • Sign up for the latest news from UOW Media

June 24, 2021


  • Story By
  • Benjamin Long
  • Photo By
  • Richard 'Bert' Roberts
Share
Type
Media Release
Category
Science and Technology
Tags
ResearchScience

UOW in the News

DNA from sediment reveals epic history of Denisova Cave

Genetic analysis uncovers 300,000 years of cave occupation by ancient humans and ice age animals


In a landmark study, scientists from Australia, Germany and Russia have used ancient DNA recovered from sediment samples from Denisova Cave in Siberia to reveal a detailed occupational history of this unique site by three distinct groups of ancient humans and a variety of animals over the past 300,000 years.

In the foothills of Russia’s Altai Mountains, Denisova Cave is famous as the site where fossil remains of an enigmatic group of archaic humans dubbed the Denisovans were first discovered. It is the only site in the world known to have also been inhabited by their close evolutionary relatives – the Neanderthals – and by early modern humans.

Over the past 40 years, Russian archaeologists have retrieved around a dozen Denisovan and Neanderthal fossils from the cave – including a bone from the daughter of a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father – but no modern human fossils have been recovered from the deposits. The scarcity of human fossils has thwarted attempts to establish which humans occupied Denisova Cave at various times in the past and which group made the stone tools and other artefacts excavated from the deposits.

In this new study, an interdisciplinary team of scientists assembled by Professor Michael Shunkov from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography (Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), including geochronologists from the University of Wollongong (UOW), reveals the sequence of human occupation of the cave – as well as other cave-dwelling animals, including bears, hyaenas and wolves – from the genetic analysis of more than 700 sediment samples.

The research, published in Nature on Thursday 24 June (AEST), is the largest analysis ever made of sediment DNA from a single site.

The entrance to Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Russia

The entrance to Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Russia.

 

The identification of ancient human DNA in 175 sediment samples greatly expands our knowledge of Denisovans and Neanderthals at the site, and also provides the first direct evidence of modern humans at Denisova Cave.

The researchers discovered that Denisovans inhabited the cave, on and off, from 250,000 years ago until 60,000 years ago, and were responsible for the earliest stone tools found at the site.

Neanderthals first appeared about 200,000 years ago, with a particular variety of DNA that was previously unknown, and had disappeared by 40,000 years ago – similar to the time of their disappearance elsewhere in Eurasia.

The ancient DNA of modern humans first shows up in sediments deposited between about 60,000 and 45,000 years ago.

UOW geochronologists Distinguished Professor Richard ‘Bert’ Roberts, Professor Zenobia Jacobs, Associate Professor Bo Li and PhD student Kieran O’Gorman collected 728 sediment samples in a dense grid from the exposed sediment profiles in the cave.

“The analysis of sediment DNA provides a wonderful opportunity to combine the dates that we previously determined for the deposits in Denisova Cave with molecular evidence for the presence of people and fauna,” Professor Roberts said. 

“Just collecting hundreds of samples from all three chambers in the cave, and documenting their precise locations, took us more than a week, but we obtained a comprehensive set of samples spanning more than 300,000 years of Siberian history,” Professor Jacobs said.

The new study builds on the detailed timeline obtained from optical dating of the Denisova Cave sediments at UOW, published in Nature in 2019.

“The chronology generated previously for the cave sediments allowed us to choose the best places to collect the DNA samples and make the most of the extraordinary insights from sediment DNA,” Professor Jacobs said.

At the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, PhD student Elena Zavala, the study’s lead author, extracted and sequenced small traces of ancient human and animal mitochondrial DNA from the huge collection of samples.

“These efforts paid off and we detected the DNA of Denisovans, Neanderthals and ancient modern humans in 24 per cent of the samples,” she said.

Project leader, Matthias Meyer, in the ancient DNA clean lab at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Credit: MPI EVA

Project leader, Matthias Meyer, in the ancient DNA clean lab at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Credit: MPI EVA 

 

When matching the DNA profiles with the ages of the layers, the researchers found the first humans to visit the site were Denisovans about 250,000 years ago, followed by Neanderthals about 200,000 years ago. Only Neanderthal DNA was found in sediments deposited between 130,000 and 80,000 years ago. Denisovans who came back after this time carried a different mitochondrial DNA to Denisovans who were there earlier, suggesting a different population had arrived in the region.

Modern human DNA first appears in the Initial Upper Palaeolithic layers, which contained pendants and other ornaments made from animal bones and teeth, mammoth ivory, ostrich eggshell, marble and gemstones. “This provides not only the first evidence of modern humans at the site, but also suggests that they may have brought new technology into the region with them,” Ms Zavala said.

The scientists also found animal DNA in nearly all samples, and identified two time periods when changes occurred in both animal and human populations. The first, around 190,000 years ago, coincided with a shift from relatively warm to relatively cold conditions, when hyaena and bear populations changed and Neanderthals first appeared in the cave.

The second major change occurred between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago, along with a shift in climate from relatively cold to relatively warm conditions. During this period, animal populations changed again, Denisovans vanished, and Neanderthals were left as the only human occupants of the cave.

“The coincidence of these population turnovers with climatic transitions between interglacial and glacial periods suggests that environmental factors played a key role in shaping the human and faunal history of this region,” Professor Roberts said.

Professor Matthias Meyer, leader of the Advanced DNA Sequencing Techniques group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and senior author of the new study, said: “Being able to generate such dense genetic data from an archaeological site is like a dream come true. There is so much information hidden in sediments – it will keep us and many other geneticists busy for a lifetime.”

About the research

‘Pleistocene sediment DNA reveals hominin and faunal turnovers at Denisova Cave’, by Elena I. Zavala et al. is published in Nature (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03675-0).

This project was funded by the Max Planck Society, the European Research Council and the Australian Research Council.

Media Assets for this article

  • Images

Media Contacts for this article

UOW Media Office

You may also be interested in

New conversations series to explore big questions and new frontiers
World-first ‘MossCam’ and smart sensor system developed by UOW researchers
UOW research receives $1.2 million through ARC Linkage Projects
Services & Help
  • Current students
  • Library
  • Information technology
  • Accommodation
  • Security & safety
  • Pool, gym & retail
News, Media & Events
  • Media Centre
  • The Stand
  • Alumni Magazine
  • Research news
  • Events
  • Find an expert
Faculties
  • Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities
  • Business & Law
  • Engineering & Information Sciences
  • Science, Medicine & Health
Administration
  • Graduation
  • Environment
  • Policy directory
  • Learning and teaching
  • Financial Services
  • Access to information
  • Jobs
UOW Entities
  • Innovation Campus
  • UOW College Australia
  • UOW College Hong Kong
  • UOW in Dubai
  • UOW Global Enterprises
  • UOW Malaysia KDU
  • UOW Pulse
Connect with us
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Conversation
  • Contact us
  • Feedback
  • Give to UOW

Northfields Ave Wollongong,  NSW 2522  Australia 
Phone: 1300 367 869 
International: +61 2 4221 3218 
Switchboard: +61 2 4221 3555

  • NUW Alliance: Smarter Solutions for NSW
  • University Global Partnership Network (UGPN)
  • Reconciliation Australia
  • AWEI LGBTQ inclusion awards logo

Aboriginal flag Torres Strait Islander flag

On the lands that we study, we walk, and we live, we acknowledge and respect the traditional custodians and cultural knowledge holders of these lands.

Copyright © 2023 University of Wollongong
CRICOS Provider No: 00102E | TEQSA Provider ID: PRV12062 | ABN: 61 060 567 686
Copyright & disclaimer | Privacy & cookie usage | Web Accessibility Statement

Close