The identification of a new hominin group in the Altai mountains called Denisovans was one of the most exciting discoveries in human evolution in the last decade. Unlike Neanderthal remains, the Denisovan fossil record consists of only a finger bone, jawbone, teeth and skull fragments. Leveraging the surviving Denisovan segments in modern human genomes has uncovered evidence of at least three introgression events from distinct Denisovan populations into modern humans in the past. Each of them presents different levels of relatedness to the sequenced Altai Denisovan, indicating a complex relationship between these sister lineages. Here we review the evidence suggesting that several Denisovan populations, who likely had an extensive geographical range, were adapted to distinct environments and introgressed into modern humans multiple times. We further discuss how archaic variants have been affected by demographic history, negative and positive selection and close by proposing possible new lines of future research.

在阿尔泰山脉发现一个名为丹尼索瓦人的新古人类群体是过去十年人类进化中最令人兴奋的发现之一。与尼安德特人的遗骸不同，丹尼索瓦人的化石记录仅由指骨、颚骨、牙齿和头骨碎片组成。利用现代人类基因组中幸存的丹尼索瓦人片段，发现了过去至少三次从不同丹尼索瓦人种群渗入现代人类的证据。它们中的每一个都与测序的阿尔泰丹尼索瓦人表现出不同程度的相关性，表明这些姐妹谱系之间存在复杂的关系。在这里，我们回顾了表明几个丹尼索瓦人种群的证据，他们可能具有广泛的地理范围，适应了不同的环境并多次渗入现代人。我们进一步讨论了古老的变体如何受到人口历史、负向和正向选择的影响，并提出了未来可能的新研究路线。