Denisova Cave is indigenously named ‘Bear’s Rock’ after a local bear spirit. Other caves in the region, and elsewhere in Siberia, are similarly named. Given that hunting and shamanism have remained relatively unchanged in Siberia since the Palaeolithic, this nomenclature could be older than it might otherwise appear. I visited Denisova Cave in early May 2017 when its undulant Altai landscape was still patched with snow. At present, the Denisovans exist more as a DNA encryption (or “ghost tribe”) than people given the scarcity of fossil remains that have been found. Nevertheless, aDNA compensates, quite a lot, for data-poor material records, and archives of their aDNA have cropped up in some distanced places including the Americas, Australia and Melanesia. It was specifically these prehistoric, Trans-Siberian Express type voyages that first attracted me to them.
Early belief-systems (symbolic, religious, mythological) spread by human ancestors along these routes enters the picture. They also appear to have been a technologically-deft group in light of the “Denisovan” bracelet found in the cave: https://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/could-this-stunning-bracelet-be-65000-to-70000-years-old/ (though it isn’t entirely clear if Denisovans, Neanderthals or even humans produced it).
They also add vast complexity to the question of sexual encounter and interbreeding between archaic human groups and the nature of those circumstances. Indeed, love triangles between Denisovans, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens appear to have been far more rampant than formerly suspected: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06004-0 Should the hybrid-human be named Denise?
The following images are of the cave and its archaeological park which currently sits in disputed territory, and from the Museum of History and Culture of the Peoples of Siberia and the Far East, in Novosibirsk.
