Denisovans were very tall people!

An article published in Science on August 12, 2026, by Brown (Denisovans towered over their contemporaries and munched a bunch of meat) caught my eye. In it, Taylor Brown mentions two papers published in bioRxiv, one of which describes leg bones dredged up from the seabed between the Island of Taiwan and mainland China. The protein in the bones showed they were Denisovans, but they were also big. The article quotes an archaeologist (University of Washington), called Ben Marwick who said that "They were very tall! Previously we knew that Denisovans had big brains from the skull and teeth finds, and now we know they had big bodies also." But, how big?

Original caption reads: Fig. 2. Penghu 2 and Penghu 3 hominin leg bones. Anterior (a), medial (b), and distal (c) views of the Penghu 2 right femoral shaft. Anterior (d), lateral (e) and distal (f) views of the Penghu 3 right tibia. Symbols: m=medial, p=posterior. Scale bar=10cm. . Yousuke Kaifu et al., 2026

The paper in question is the following: Denisovan leg bones from Taiwan reveal large body size, Yousuke Kaifu, Chun-Hsiang Chang, Yumeko Tarusawa, Rikai Sawafuji, Shiori Yonemoto, Shigeru Shimamura, Masanaru Takai, Reiko T. Kono, Cheng-Han Sun, Cheng-Hsiu Tsai, Minoru Yoneda, Takumi Tsutaya, bioRxiv 2026.08.07.743438; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.08.07.743438.

The specimens are known as Penghu 2 and Penghu 3, different people, about 43,000 to 45,000 years old. The paper notes that they are similar to the Neanderthals, and different to Africans and also to the other hominins found in East Asia: "Among the premodern Homo groups, an anteroposteriorly thickened (non-platymeric) proximal shaft characterizes Neanderthals and in particular Middle Pleistocene European Homo, as compared to African Early-Middle Pleistocene Homo (Fig. 4b). Penghu 2 is similar to the Middle Pleistocene European Homo in this respect. Such a trend is not evident in the available small sample of H. erectus and Middle Pleistocene Homo from eastern Asia... Penghu 3 exhibits a strong tibial posterior pilaster, a shared feature of European Middle Pleistocene Homo and Neanderthals, as well as some Upper Palaeolithic modern humans"

This seems reasonable, Denisovans are a sister clade to modern humans and Neanderthals. We appeared later than Homo erectus, and should therefore share similar features.

The two specimens, who may have been male, were tall and big: Penghu 2 was 1.8 m tall and weighed 83 kg (5.9 ft. - 183 lbs ) and Penghu 3 was 1.9 m tall and 91 kg (6.23 ft - 201 lbs), similar to the largest known European or African hominins from that period, but much taller and massive than the Asian erectus.

The authors suggest that "large-bodied Denisovan individuals inhabited both northern and southern regions of Asian mainland, and large brain sizes seen in some Denisovan individuals (Harbin 1, and possibly other specimens such as Xujiayao 6 and Xuchang 1) was at least partly a consequence of their large body sizes, as has been suggested for Neanderthals."

Comments

This study is very interesting. First of all, we have a random sample of two specimens, out of a Denisovan population, and both are very, very tall, even by modern standards. Could they have inspired tales of giants among shorter hominins that lived in the same region? Did they move on, into America and settle there, giving birth to myths among the later arrivals (modern humans) like the Si-Te-Cah, a race of red-haired giants mentioned by the Northern Paiute people in Nevada, U.S? (see my posts about them)

Large body sizes are efficient when living in a cold environment (the paper mentions this), so they were well equipped to deal with the icy conditions that they would have come across on their journey north, into Eastern Siberia and Beringia.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Skin color and Neandertals

Qiliang Ding et al., (2014) published a paper (Neanderthal origin of the haplotypes carrying the functional variant Val92Met in the MC1R in modern humans, Molecular biology, DOI:10.1093/molbev/msu180) which looks into the pale skin of Eurasians in general as due to admixture between Homo sapiens and Neandertals.

The color of our skins is due to the combination of two pigments, one red (phaeomelanin) and one black (eumelanin), and the proportion of this color blend is in part defined by the Melanocyte-stymulating hormone or MSH. MSH is encoded by a gene called MC1R.

If the function of this gene is altered by mutations, it impacts on MSH and therefore on skin color.

Five "loss-of-function" variants of MC1R have been discovered to date, and are linked to fair hair (red or blond) and fair skin:

1. Val60Leu (rs1805005*T)
2. Val92Met (rs2228479*A)
3. Arg151Cys (rs1805007*T)
4. Arg160Trp (rs1805008*T)
5. Asp294His (rs1805009*C)

Neanderthals also carried (but we, modern humans don't), another variant of MC1R (Arg307Gly)

Qiliang's team found that "...almost all of the derived alleles at the Val92Met variant of MC1R (rs2228479*A) in the human gene pool are carried by the putative introgressive haplotypes", by "putative introgressive haplotypes" they mean "haplotypes from Neanderthal introgression in modern Eurasians".

It is found at roughly 5% introgression rates in Europeans (not very high), up to 30% in East Asians (Chinese for instance) and at a surprising high introgression rate of 60 to 70% in the Taiwanese aborigine people (the Atayal and the Ami).

They don't know why this cline exists and conjecture: " Therefore, we cannot rule out demographic effects such as population bottleneck as an explanation for the unusually high frequency of rs2228479*A in Atayal and Ami although positive natural selection is also a possibility"

Its origin is linked to the Altai Neanderthal branch and the time line is the following:

"Based on the values, it could be estimated that the putative introgressive haplotypes diverged with the AMH 552.5 ka, then diverged with the Denisovan 159.0 ka, and then diverged with the Altai Neanderthal 103.3 ka (fig. 2). It could be observed that the divergence time between the putative introgressive haplotypes and the Altai Neanderthal (103.3 ka) postdates the reported Neanderthal–AMH divergence time (>270 ka), which indicates the presence of postdivergence introgression"

Altai, Japanese and Africans

The paper reports that "Remarkably, it was observed that all putative introgressive haplotypes carry the derived allele of the Val92Met variant (rs2228479*A), and almost none [except a Japanese subject NA19084_a]... of the nonintrogressive haplotypes carries the rs2228479*A. This suggests that the rs2228479*A carried by the putative introgressive haplotypes might be from archaic hominin lineage. However, rs2228479*A was not found in the Altai Neanderthal genome."

They explain the lack of rs2228479*A in the Altai Neanderthal as follows: " 1) The rs2228479 is polymorphic in Neanderthal populations, and 2) the mutation creating rs2228479*A occurred on the putative introgressive haplotype shortly after it entered modern human gene pool (...) The rs2228479*A was found in one (out of 41) sequencing read of Altai Neanderthal and one (out of 20) sequencing read of Denisovan. All of the relevant sequencing reads and base calls passed quality control filter. Therefore, it could be possible that the Neanderthal and Denisovan are heterozygous at the rs2228479, and some unknown reason caused the imbalanced observation of ancestral and derived alleles of rs2228479 in sequencing reads."

The Japanese subject NA19084-a is among the non-introgresses subjects, so the derived allele at rs2228479 "might be from recurrent mutation, double recombination, or biased gene conversion".

Interestingly they found this allele at rs2228479 in three African subjects: "...among all HapMap African individuals, it was observed that one YRI (Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria; NA18852) and two MKK (Massai in Kinyawa, Kenya; NA21339 and NA21574) carry heterozygous alleles at the rs2228479".

They propose three possible explanations for this odd situation:

"Presence of derived alleles at Val92Met (i.e., rs2228479*A) in Africans could be explained by three models: 1) The rs2228479*A existed in the human gene pool before the Neanderthal–AMH divergence and was drifted to very low frequency in modern Africans whereas preserved in the Neanderthals and modern Eurasians (i.e., the “ancestral polymorphism model”), 2) recent gene flow from modern Eurasians to Africans, or 3) independent origin (such as recurrent mutation)."

They reject (1) but consider (2) and (3) as feasible. That is, it originated independently in Africa or there was a recent flow into Africa carrying Neanderthal genes i.e. contemporary Eurasians, which is quite reasonable, nevertheless, I would add, Neanderthals could have entered Africa and mixed there with Massai in Kenya and Yoruba in Nigeria.

Another surprising find was that it appears ata 50% frequency among the Cheyenne people of America. That is high, and rather unique in the New World, where it is hardly found at all.

Below is a map with its global distribution:

It is important to point out that Norton, Werren, and Friedlaender,(2015) found this Val92Met polymorphism in over 600 Melanesians sampled on different islands, reporting that the frequency of the derived allele ranged from 4 to 33% yet it seemed to have no influence whatsoever on the skin or hair color of the individuals. This suggests that it must interact with other genes to define the tone of hair and skin.

The same thing can be seen in East Asians: they have black hair just like Africans - and unlike brown of fair haired Europeans- despite carrying this derived gene that promotes fair hair.

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

Red headed Amerindians and the G haplogroup in America (an e-mail)

This morning I read an e-mail one of the readers of this Blog, which was very interesting indeed (Thank you for writing, Craig). My reply (edited) is below, I just wanted to share it with you because it has some good links which expand on previously published posts.

Red Headed Xiaohe mummy, China

The mail asked about photographs of the red-headed Amerindians who carried D4h3 hg. (my posts were here).

My reply

... Regarding red-haired natives, they do not abound, perhaps they were much more frequent in the past as their mummified remains attest.

If you are interested in what they looke like when photography was discovered, please check out the following sites on Alakaluf or Kaweskar, Yamana or Yaghans, Chumash, Pericue or Pericu:

http://www.limbos.org/sur/alak.htm and Kaweskar, Yamana, Chumash.

No photos exist of the Chilean Chono, who became extinct in the 1700s.

When you google red-haired native Americans you come across al sorts of weird stuff: UFOs, Atlanteans, white race supremacists, but if you remove the junk there are some nice gems to be found like the definitively red-haired Xiahoe Beauty mummy from China, pictured above, ca. 4,000 years old found in the Tarim Basin in Northwest China.

Then there are the Chinchorro people of Chile, not mentioned in my post, also boat-people like the Chumash, Kaweskar, Yamana, Chono and Peircue. Their mummies seem to be red headed. Like I mentioned in my post, these Chinchorro also used red pigment to stain their mummies and wrapped them in rushes (just like the Lovelock cave natives did).

We discussed the possible Transatlantic peopling route into America, and I commented that:

The transatlantic crossing from Africa is indeed a very feasible option (I have posted about Phoenicians, Greek and Carthagininans crossing the Ocean) and may have also been an Atlantic entry route for H. erectus into South America, so it is also possible.

I believe that mtDNA and Y chromosome analysis will reveal interesting and complex peopling patterns once the native people are sampled in depth and ancient remains are also sequenced. It willl yield some surprises. I am currenty wondering if some of the G and R Y-chromosome haplogroups found among natives is due to admixture with Europeans post-1492 discovery or... is archaic and entered America long before its discovery...

G haplogroup in America

This ends my reply to Craig, and yes, I found some G NRY hg. mentioned in a paper on the Kolla natives in Northern Argentina. The authors attribute it to admixture with Italian migrants post 1900s.

G haplogroup is definitively an Old World lineage and is found at low frequencies across a large part of Eurasia. It is also found among Spaniards (who colonized South America) and Italians (50% of Argentines have Italian ancestry), so a recent European admixture cannot be discarded.

Nevertheless, these Kolla carry a duplicate at STR DYS19, which is uncommon and found at very low frequencies in certain haplotypes within C and G Y chromosome haplogroups. C is interesting since it is a founding lineage in America but very rare and G is the European one mentioned above.

This makes me wonder.... Why do both these hgs. have the duplication and the others don't?
Could the Kolla have been wrongly typed as G and actually be C?
What are the odds of an Italian with the rare G DYS19 STR duplication reaching Northern Argentina and spreading his genes so widely that they later appear in a small sampling of Amerindian genes?
How could a genuine Native American haplotype shared with Europeans (i.e. R or G) be identified as autochthonous instead of being classified as European admixtuer(as currently is)?

I will look into this and post on it later.

Below is a map with G hg. distribution:

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

More on Elongated skulls in America...

On red or fair haired elongated skulled people in Peru. Artificial and naturally ocurring skull deformation...

WWe know that cranial deformation is widespread across the globe, [9] and that American natives did it at the time of Spanish discovery and conquest.

The map below from Juan R. Munizaga (1987) Deformación craneana intencional en América, clearly shows that it was widespread and very ancient practice: [8]

Munizaga, author of the map, points out in his work [8] a very unusual hypothesis that:

"in only two of the cases can we be reasonably be sure of an extra-American origin: a) The annular, oblique tabular and erect tabular types found among the people of the Northwest coast of North America [...] which entered our continent very few centuries ago [...] and b) the brifronto-vertico-occipital deformation. This type, is very rare and exclusively found in Southeastern USA [...] is depicted in ceramic figures of a Taoist monastery in China dating from the early Christian Era [...] accepting an extra-American origin, we propose a general hypothesis that this custom was introduced by travellers from the Far East..." [8].

Nevertheless, I want to point out a comment published in 1855 by Rivero regarding deformed crania as a mutation and not due to artificial causes: [1]

Oblong skulls were due to a mutation

"there is more: the same configuration is found among unborn children and we have become convinced of this truth after seeing the fetus found in the womb of a pregnant woman's mummy, which we found in a cave in Huichay, two leagues from Tarma and which is now in our collection. Professonr d'Outrepont, one of the leading celebrities in the science of obstertrics has assured us that this fetus is seven months old. It belongs, according to the very pronounced configuration of its skull, to the tribe of the Huancas. In plate VII of the Atlas is this interesting and decissive proof against those favoring mechanical action as the only and exclusive cause of the phrenologic shape of the peruvian race... [1]"

The image below depicts the fetus mentioned by Rivero above:

Plate VII. Rivero (1855). Seven month fetus with elongated skull. From [1]

Although one case is not enough to support a mutation that produces elongated skulls, and we could also assume that the fetus described by Rivero had suffered some intra-uterine disease that caused that oddly shaped skull.

Nordenskjöld reported that a baby was born in Bolivia with an unnaturally long head, but the midwife was not worried, they could shape it at will and make it rounder ("In Ascencion wurde ein Kind mit unnatürlich langem Kopfe geboren" = "In Ascencion a child was long with unnatural Head born".[5]

The above shows two things: (1) oblong skulls ocurr naturally and (2) Amerindians were good at re-shaping skulls.

Nevertheless, Rivero's opinon was repeated later by : " A. L. Kroeber (1944), reporting on pre-Inca crania from further north on the same coast, stated that the majority of undeformed Early Chimu skulls were long. Thus, these earliest pyramid builders of Peru were not identical with their historic successors, all of whom are round-headed... " [2]

Since I am not a specialist I can hardly judge how Kroeber detected that ancient Early Chimu skulls were "long". But if his research was sound, it could point out to some genetic trait.

If it has a genetic cause, perhaps DNA sequencing could shed some light on the matter (and I mean "real" sequencing, and not the kind I posted about yesterday).

The Paracas mummies had elongated skulls (in my opinion, artificially elongated skulls), and possessed oddly colored hair:

Light colored Amerindian hair

Mildred Trotter examined the hair from the Paracas Mummies, and described it as: "... the sample in each case was interspersed with very light yellow hairs which may be assumed to have been white. In general, the color was a rusty brown and gave the appearance of having faded..." [3]

She also noted that the hair of two of the mummies "was quite definitely wavy" and was straight in the others. Waviness is related to the hair's shape of its cross-section. Amerindian and Asian hair tends to have a circular cross-section (straight hair) while Caucasian hair is more oval (tending to be wavy). Trotter reported that "The cross-section form shows so much divergence between the different mummies that they cover all divisions of hair form" [3], that is Amerindian - Asian - European.

The area of the cross-section of Paracas mummies was 30% less than the average value for Amerindians. (European cross-section surface is smaller than Native American surface area): "The size of the hair was much smaller than has been found for other Indians..." [3]

Realizing that this may place the Paracas people outside of the Amerindians, she added that post-mortem dehydration could account for changes in cross-sectional shape as well as its surface area. The brown or reddish colored hair could also be the consequence of a dark black hair having faded over time. The fair hair was due to a darkening white hair.

Trotter's explanations are very reasonable and is the most likely cause for odd colored hair among the Paracas people.

However, reddish wavy hair is not unknown among the Mataco natives from Argentina's Chaco region (northeastern Argentina), see Pelleschi below: [7]

"The hair is straight, but in some -very few- individuals I have noticed it slightly wavy, almost curly, I can not say if due to art or nature [...] The hair is jet black among the adults, white among the elders [...] reddish often among the boys until the age of 10 or 12 years: a curious thing, which brings to my memory Salles theory, according to which primitive men must have had red hair. So here we would have a case of atavism..."[7]

We can forgive Pelleschi for his Victorian mentality (after all, he wrote that in 1897).

I am always interested in red-haired people outside of Europe because it may indicate a link to Neanderthal genes, and if in America, it may hint at an early migration of Neanderthals into America followed by admixture there with Homo sapiens, once they reached that continent.

A closing word on Deformed skulls

Cieza de León, a Spanish conquistador and chronicler noted that along the coast of Ecuador (in the 1540s), the newborn baby's head was pressed between two boards (tablas) so that by the time he reached the age of four or five his head was either long or broad. They did this because it made them healthier and better able to work. [4]

Curiously, another reason is given for the practice of cranial deformation: Dr. Alvarado cites Juan Manuel Balcazar and his book about "The History of Medicine in Bolvia" where he states that according to Pachacutec: "The Inca [emperor] Manco Kapac decreed that the head of newborn babies be tied so that they grow up with mental handicaps because indians with large round heads were very enterprising and specially very disobedient". He wanted them to have long sloping heads to make them obedient and submissive.[6]

Many Paracas skulls have holes neatly cut into them, these trepanations are be explained by Dr. Alvarado:

Skull deformation caused plenty of problems according to Dr. Alvarado. It led to intra-craneal hypertension which can be noted due to the presence of the so called digital impressions seen on some of the deformed skulls. This custom led to mental alterations, reduced IQ, epileptic fits, head aches, etc. And (this is very interesting) may have been the reason that some of the skulls were trepanated, that is, opened, as a kind of cure (perhaps to let the "demons" of illness out). Though some alien-mongers suggest hi-tech medicine was required for these skull opening operatins, they were done under primitive conditions with obsidian tools, and the surprising fact is that up to 60% of the patients survived the operation. [6]

Based on all of the above, it is quite weird to suggest that the Paracas people had a mtDNA unlike any other human one, displaying mutations not found in any animal (see yesterday's post please). The Paracas mummies were normal humans with artificially deformed skulls. The light color of their mummies hair may be due to some genetic trait or, simply the aging of ancient hair which bleached it. There was probably some genetic mutation that caused occasional oblong heads among Amerindians as reported by Rivero, Kroeber and Nordenskjöld, but its prevalence among the native Americans is unknown.

Sources

[1] Mariano Eduardo de Rivero, (1855) Antigüedades Peruanas. pp 32
[2] Thor Heyerdahl and Geoffrey Ashe, (1971). Isolationist Or Diffusionist?: The Bearded Gods Speak Pall Mall press.
[3] Mildred Trotter, (1943). Hair from Paracas Indian Mummies. Am. J. Phyg. Anthrop., n.s., 1 (1) : 69-76.
[4] Cieza de León, P., Ballesteros, M., [Ed.], (2000). La crónica del Perú (1553). Madrid:Dastin S. pp. 177
[5] Nordenskjöld, E., (1910). Indianer und Weisse in Nordostbolivien p. 153
[6] Dr. Ramiro Alvarado. Trepanaciones y Deformaciones Craneales en Tiwanaku, Sociedad Boliviana de Cirugía
[7] Pelleschi, Juan, (1897). Los Indios Matacos y su Lengua. Part I. Ch. II. pp 175

Further Reading

[8] Juan R. Munizaga (1987). Deformación craneana intencional en América. Revista Chilena de Antropología No 6. 1987, 113-147.

[9] Dingwall, Eric, (1931). Artificial Cranial Deformation London.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Red Haired Paleo Indian in the US

Red haired people are quite odd among the Native Americans, and after reading about the mummy from Lovelock Nevada, I decided to check online what else had been found. And I came across quite a bit of information, that I tied in with other things that I had read in the past. The outcome is a series of posts beginning with this one (it was too long to put in one post):

First we will go East, to the Eastern U.S. seaboard. Then we will go back to the West Coast and tie in Lovelock with other natives in that area. We will go down the Pacific coast to South America and Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia and try to see how all these places are linked by "red" hair and bones and common burial practices and a similar mtDNA.

An article from a 1815 Magazine

The article, is from Analetic Magazine, Philadelphia. Page 260 of the Vol 6. Series 33. And I have copied some key phrases (read the article following the previous link and go to page 260), which is inserted below:

 

The letter was written by a Mr. Samuel L. Mitchill in August 1815 describing a mummy he found in a cave in Kentucky, U.S. Which was the remains of a young man whose: "scalp, with small exceptions, is covered with sorrel or foxy hair.".

Now the word Sorrel is new for me, so I looked it up, and found out that it is used to describe the coat color of horses. It is usually used to refer to a copper-red shade of chestnut or, directly, chestnut. It is applied to any "reddish" horse coat. The word derives from the flowers of the sorrel herb (see photo below).

The body was wrapped in deer skins and a "cloth" of knotted twine not made on a loom. The innermost cover was also a cloth and had feathers. The body was in a squatting position with one arm forward.

The mummy in a foetal or squatting position is not uncommon among South American natives, and the "feathers" rung a bell in my mind, I had read about a mummy, with feathers, in a squatting position... in Patagonia, but that is part of my next post.

So we have a red-haired mummy in Kentucky. Buried in a cave wrapped in several liners, including feathers and squatting.

I have not found any references regarding where this mummy is stored. In which museum. Was it dated? analysed? returned for burial?

I am aware that a red haired native on the East coast will elicit comments about a European transatlantic crossing (Solutreans and Cro Magnons peopling America long before Asians entered America via Beringia. But the fact is that Asians did enter the New World, the point is that they were not the current people of Eastern Asia (no Han Chinese here), they were earlier people, maybe even Neanderthals.

Next post, the Mummy at Cueva del Gualicho, Patagonia.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall ©