Denisova Cave is in the Bashelaksky Range of the Altai Mountains in Siberia, and it is the only place on Earth that has given its name to a species of human.
In 2008 bone fragments were recovered from it. By 2010 they had been conclusively established as belonging to a separate early human population, the Denisova hominin, known ever since as Denisovans. That is an extraordinary thing for a cave to do: the type site is not a skeleton in a museum but this hole in a Siberian hillside, and the people are named after it.
The cave sits in a region thought to have been occupied at different times by both Neanderthals and modern humans. Denisovans, Neanderthals and related hybrids may all have used it over long stretches, though perhaps not simultaneously.
The artefacts run deep. Some are dated to around 40,000 years before present, and remains of a 32,000-year-old prehistoric horse have come out of the same deposits. In 2016 a bone needle dated to 50,000 years ago was found here and described as the most ancient needle known, although a possible needle from South Africa may be about 10,000 years older.
One honest complication runs through all of it. Whether the needle and certain other artefacts were made by Homo sapiens or by the Denisova hominin is not settled, because the objects and the bones are not always found together in a way that can be attributed.
The scientific name Homo denisova was used informally for a time, and even that has been revisited: the naming was reconsidered in June 2025.
Analysis showed the Denisovans were related to Neanderthals and interbred with the ancestors of modern Melanesians, so this cave is directly upstream of living people.
The most remarkable single find came out of a rubbish pile. Researchers ran collagen peptide fingerprinting, a technique called ZooMS, across 2,315 unidentified bone fragments from earlier excavations, looking for anything human. One fragment, DC1227 from layer 12 of the East Gallery, came back positive. It weighed 1.68 grams and was under 25 mm long, and it turned out to be Denisova 11: a first-generation hybrid, with a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. It was also the first time the technique had ever identified an extinct hominid.
Kazakhstan
See it on the map
This is remote ground. The closest other places on the map are a long way off.
