Enlarge / These excavations identified Denisovan DNA within the sediment. (credit: Dongju Zhang, Dongju Zhang, Lanzhou University) The Denisovans occupy a very weird place in humanity's history. Like the Neanderthals, they are an early branch off the lineage that produced modern humans and later intermingled with modern humans. But we'd known of Neanderthals for roughly 150 years before we got any of their DNA sequence and had identified a set of anatomical features that defined them.