Analysis of enamel proteins from the teeth of six Homo erectus individuals who lived in China around 400,000 years ago shows they had Denisovan genes too, according to research reported on Wednesday in Nature by Qiaomei Fu and colleagues. The finding points to a long-ago meeting and mating between hominin groups, with the evidence pulled from tooth enamel rather than any grand monument to human progress. The six individuals came from Zhoukoudian, Hexian and Sunjiadong in China, and the study says the genetic traces in their teeth reveal a tangled family tree that did not stay neatly separated for long.
Who Had the Power to Leave the Trace
The research is based on tooth enamel from five male and one female erectus individuals. All six individuals feature two amino acid variants. One, called A253G, had never been seen before and appears to have been unique to erectus; the researchers said Denisovans, Neanderthals, Homo antecessor from Atapuerca, Spain, great apes and the so-called erectus from Dmanisi did not have it. The other variant, M273V, had been identified in Denisovans and only in them, and now in the Chinese erectus individuals as well. That combination is what led the researchers to conclude that erectus and Denisovans met and interbred, producing a population in eastern Asia that retained the Denisovan trait.
The article says Homo erectus emerged in Africa over 2 million years ago and spread to Eurasia, where it survived until just 107,000 years ago. It also says erectus passed through Israel during that migration, and that Ubeidiya has been identified as a site from 1.9 million years ago linked to that migration. Fossils identified by Chinese researchers paleontologists as erectus date back as much as 2.1 million years. The remains found at Dmanisi in Georgia, dating to about 1.8 million years ago, have traditionally been described as erectus, but the article says it may be easier to think of them as a more archaic species or variant.
What the Teeth Say About the Tree
The article says Neanderthals, Homo sapiens and Denisovans arose from a branch in Africa that split off the hominin tree perhaps around 800,000 years ago, with the branch that would produce Homo sapiens staying in Africa and another branch migrating to Eurasia and producing Neanderthals and Denisovans there. It adds that erectus originated in a migration 2 million years ago and met Denisovans, who emerged on another branch of the human tree in Asia less than a million years ago. The conclusion drawn was that erectus and Denisovans met and interbred, producing a population in eastern Asia that retained the Denisovan trait.
The article also notes that some archaeologists point out that if all these variants on the Homo genus family tree were mixing and mating, they were technically all one species with a very wide range of traits, but says that is semantics. That is the kind of tidy label-making institutions love, while the bones keep refusing to behave.
What Survived, and What Got Passed On
The article notes that our sapiens ancestors mixed with Denisovans, Neanderthals and some other archaic hominin as well, and says that at least some of the genes we inherited from Denisovans may have originated in Homo erectus. In other words, the inheritance line is messier than the clean categories people like to pin on the past. The study, by Qiaomei Fu and colleagues, was reported on Wednesday in Nature, with the article by Ruth Schuster published at 06:27 PM on May 13 2026 IDT.
Images in the article are credited to Qiaomei Fu / Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology / Chinese Academy of Sciences, Freyant/Shutterstock, and Hexian Culture / Tourism and Sports Bureau, Ma'anshan. The facts in the teeth do not care about the neatness of the labels; they only show that the old boundaries were never as sealed as the official stories like to pretend.