A second article published yesterday in Nature (Ruan, Q., Li, H., Xing, S. et al. Denisovans from southwestern China and their subsistence strategies. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10997-4) (first study mentioned in this post) investigated the stone tools and bones with cut marks found in the sediments of the excavation at Bianfu Cave, Yunnan, China. These were Denisovan tools. Some of which are depicted in the image below.
This group of Denisovans lived in an area that at that time was forested, and they hunted big game like water buffalo, and gaur (an animal resembling a bison), also deer (sika an red). Their tools were made from local stone and bone, and were not very elaborate.
1,366 stone artifacts were unearthed, and rougly two thirds of them were made from sandy mudstone. sourced locally they are not simple, but they are not sophisticated either. The authors write: "The core assemblage primarily reflects expedient flaking strategies, with generally low reduction strategies. Simple unifacial cores dominate, followed by bifacial cores... the retouch intensity of tools is low." This type of stone technology is found across the whole excavated period, stable over a period spanning from 167,000 to 134,000 years ago. They also found seven bone tools at the site.
The authors note that the tools "lack diagnostic Middle Paleolithic markers, such as Levallois technology and instead reflects predominantly expedient strategies in core reduction and tool production" It is similar to the Baishiya Karst Cave, in Tibet, where DNA identified the famous Xiahe mandible as Denisovan (a site that is 160,000 years-old). The bone tools are very similar to Neanderthal ones, suggesting that bone tool use was widespread, and also, hinting at adaptability and similar cultural behavior in both groups.
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