Denisovans are members of a hominin group only known from fragmentary fossils genomically studied from a single site, Denisova Cave 1-3 in Siberia, and from their genetic legacy through gene flow into several low-altitude East Asian populations 4,5 and high-altitude modern Tibetans 6 . The lack of morphologically informative Denisovan fossils impedes our ability to connect geographically and temporally dispersed Asian fossil hominins and understand their relation to these recent populations in a coherent manner, including the Denisovan-inherited human adaptation to the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau 7,8 . Here we report a Denisovan mandible, identified by ancient protein analysis 9,10 , found in Baishiya Karst Cave, Xiahe County, Gansu Province (China), on the Tibetan Plateau. We determine the mandible to be at least 160 thousand years old through U-series dating of an adhering carbonate matrix. It is the first direct evidence of this hominin group outside the Altai Mountains, and provides unique insights into Denisovan mandibular and dental morphology. Our results indicate that archaic hominins occupied the Tibetan Plateau in the Middle Pleistocene and successfully adapted to high-altitude hypoxia environments much earlier than the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens.

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The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Xinjiang, in the heart of Inner Asia, and the languages that they spoke have long been debated and remain contentious1. Here we present genomic data from 5 individuals dating to around 3000–2800 bc from the Dzungarian Basin and 13 individuals dating to around 2100–1700 bc from the Tarim Basin, representing the earliest yet discovered human remains from North and South Xinjiang, respectively. We find that the Early Bronze Age Dzungarian individuals exhibit a predominantly Afanasievo ancestry with an additional local contribution, and the Early–Middle Bronze Age Tarim individuals contain only a local ancestry. The Tarim individuals from the site of Xiaohe further exhibit strong evidence of milk proteins in their dental calculus, indicating a reliance on dairy pastoralism at the site since its founding. Our results do not support previous hypotheses for the origin of the Tarim mummies, who were argued to be Proto-Tocharian-speaking pastoralists descended from the Afanasievo1,2 or to have originated among the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex3 or Inner Asian Mountain Corridor cultures4. Instead, although Tocharian may have been plausibly introduced to the Dzungarian Basin by Afanasievo migrants during the Early Bronze Age, we find that the earliest Tarim Basin cultures appear to have arisen from a genetically isolated local population that adopted neighbouring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert.