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The story
A research team at the University of California, Berkeley has revealed that about 1% of the modern human genome comes from a “mystery human” that was neither Neanderthal nor Denisovan. That proportion rivals the amount of Neanderthal DNA carried by non-African populations, and traces of it turned up in European, Asian, and African populations alike. The study used a new method called TRACE, which identifies signs of interbreeding without relying on reference genomes from ancient humans. In the 5ch thread, posters speculated about the identity of this “mystery human” and when the interbreeding occurred, while others chimed in with detailed knowledge of Denisovan and Neanderthal admixture history and floated candidate fossil species like Homo naledi.
A study conducted at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in the US has found that roughly 1 percent of the modern human genome was inherited from a “mystery human” that was neither Neanderthal nor Denisovan.
That 1 percent figure is comparable to the amount of Neanderthal-derived DNA found in non-African populations.
What’s more, these fragments turned up in Europe, Asia, and Africa alike.
Source: nazology.kusuguru.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
A paper with almost the same content was published back in 2020, but this new study uses a new method called TRACE, which uses an "ancestral recombination graph" to identify ancient introgression without needing a reference genome from archaic humans.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aef8874
"Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs"
The two ultra-ancient "ghost populations" that had been proposed before were also confirmed using this method.
Wasn't it something about bears or sea urchins?
Wait, aren't Japanese people's ancestors just poop?
A "humanzee," huh?
So Homo sapiens mixed with Neanderthals and Denisovans the moment they left Africa, but it turns out they were already a "frisky" species interbreeding with mystery humans even before leaving Africa.
And yet somehow modern Japanese people are… (´・ω・`)
Must be the food.
Personally, maybe it's time to realize that leaving descendants or not is, in a sense, meaningless.
https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.aef8874/asset/2f6f444d-2b9a-4f68-bfa9-ec65ace08f5a/assets/images/large/science.aef8874-fa.jpg
– Africans carry introgression from an ancient lineage that split off 830,000 years ago, leaving traces in all modern humans.
– The archaic humans that interbred with Denisovans belong to a lineage that split off 1.77 million years ago, leaving traces in East Asians, Oceanians, and Native Americans.
What exactly is the basis for the claim that Japanese people have a low level of intelligence?
Sorry to disappoint, but Japanese people are the same.
Asians interbred with Denisovans around 50,000 years ago, and those Denisovans had themselves interbred with a different archaic Asian human lineage that split off about 1.77 million years ago.
So that Homo erectus-like DNA is present in East Eurasians too. The Jomon people only carried a tiny amount of it.
But modern Japanese people actually carry a bit more of that archaic DNA than the Jomon did.
Maybe their range was so narrow and their numbers so small that fossils just aren't turning up.
Fossils have been dug up, they're just too old to yield readable DNA. The oldest human genome recovered so far dates to 430,000 years ago, and even that's only partial.
High-quality genomes go back 200,000 years for Denisovans and 120,000 years for Neanderthals.
What this study found is that a mystery human lineage that split off 830,000 years ago in Africa interbred with the ancestors of modern humans living in Africa around 300,000 years ago.
I never wrote "low." I just wanted to show that, alongside comebacks so intellectually sharp that foreigners can't even follow them, Japanese people also drop the occasional mundane comment.
Ah, I see.
There's actually a strong candidate for the "mystery human" that interbred in Africa. Some argue it was likely a descendant of a hominin that evolved down a different branch, something like Homo naledi.
Denisovans = passed down in legend as dwarves, the "short, dexterous cave-dwellers"
Actually, that doesn't seem to be the case. According to a paper by Japanese researchers just published on August 16, 2026, two Denisovan individuals found on Taiwan's Penghu Islands — believed to have interbred with the Paleolithic ancestors of the Jomon people — were remarkably tall.
Those Denisovans stood about 190cm. It's possible they were among the largest humans of the last glacial period.
Preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.07.743438v1.full
Honestly, this country hasn't changed since the Kojiki (Japan's oldest chronicle, full of myth) — we're just Homo sapiens who love a good fantasy.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
It’s well known that Neanderthal DNA makes up roughly 1-2% of the genomes of non-African populations, but what this new study revealed is something different: traces of an unknown human population with no surviving fossils or directly sequenced DNA. The method used, called an “ancestral recombination graph” (ARG), is novel in that it can infer past interbreeding from the recombination patterns preserved within living human populations, even without directly reading DNA from ancient bones. In the thread, some posters pointed out how this differs from a similar “ghost population” study published in 2020, while others floated candidate interbreeding partners such as Homo naledi, a hominin on a side branch of the family tree. Overall, commenters tended to frame this less as a brand-new discovery and more as a methodological advance. Note: this topic tends to veer into Japan-Korea rivalry territory on 5ch’s Newsplus board, and this thread was no exception, with a number of posts bringing in inappropriate ethnic remarks — those have been excluded from this article.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Newsplus) thread “[Study] 1% of the Modern Human Genome Found to Be Inherited from a “Mystery Human” That Was Neither Neanderthal Nor Denisovan“.
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