However, even with the uncertainty about the mutation rate, we can estimate relative dates reasonably well, and we can be confident that this previously unsampled human population split off at about twice the separation time of Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans. I think of this group as “superarchaic” humans, as they represent a more deeply splitting lineage than Denisovans. They are what I call a “ghost” population, a population we do not have data from in unmixed form, but whose past existence can be detected from its genetic contributions to later people.
