Many of Asia's distinct populations have genetic heritage in common with a 40,000-year-old hominin found in Denisova Cave in southern Russia in 2008.

David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and their colleagues looked at data on single-DNA-base changes in individuals representing 33 populations from Asia and Oceania. They found Denisovan genetic material in populations including Australian Aborigines, New Guineans and aboriginal negrito populations of the Philippines, but not in others such as East Asians and western Indonesians.

The team suggests that Denisovans lived over a huge range, from Siberia to Southeast Asia, and that gene flow into modern humans occurred on the islands of Southeast Asia rather than the mainland. The results also indicate that Southeast Asia was settled in a number of waves.

Am. J. Hum. Genet. 10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.09.005 (2011)