This discovery doesn't tell us much about the skills, intelligence, and technology of the Denisovans in general. It only establishes an upper bound, which can be wildly at odds with the average. Especially in a time with no writing and terrible long-distance communication, isolated individuals or groups could have come up with amazing skills only to let it die out soon after.
There were individuals and/or small groups of Homo sapiens sapiens who built highly elaborate clockwork mechanisms with dozens of gears 2000 years ago. At the same time, a significant portion of the remaining population of Homo sapiens sapiens were picking berries in the forest. Even today, some of us can build billions of microscopic transistors and arrange them on a chip to do crazy things while others of the same species are just waiting for rain so they can grow something to eat. The evolutionary history of our own kind is already looking far from linear, and it's going to become even more complicated once we take seriously the fact that a species is nowhere near homogeneous in its skills and intelligence. Some of the things we've been placing on the timeline may have been outliers in the first place.
If by "some of us" you mean hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers, managers, janitors, miners that dig the raw materials, shipping specialists and all sorts of professionals and billions of consumers (that allow for large scale production to be economically feasible), yeah, I guess collectively we are "smarter" than a self sufficient guy merely waiting for the right time the seeds to plant themselves, pests just killing themselves, the crops just harvesting themselves, the produce just storing itself, the next years seeds just setting themselves aside, the meals just preparing themselves and so on.
> The evolutionary history of our own kind is already looking far from linear, and it's going to become even more complicated once we take seriously the fact that a species is nowhere near homogeneous in its skills and intelligence.
I believe one of the reasons we as an species have what could be considered advanced skills and high intelligence is that we are very diverse and try different strategies as different sub-populations. It's a long term evolutionary adaptation, and we can't afford to be homogeneous. That would slow down innovation to Komodo dragon levels. In practical terms it would basically destroy innovation. IMO.
you're already cheating when you compare ancient vs modern methods of production.
technologies are basically extensions of human capabilities in reified form. so if you choose a method of production that relies heavily on advanced technologies, of course it's going to seem very impressive in comparison.
you personally might feel like a genius because you figured out how to piece together stackoverflow answers, bits of libraries, and algorithms that someone else wrote, but it doesn't actually mean that you're a genius. it just means that you have access to tools that augment your memory, your reasoning, and other abilities.
Those systems were all built by humans. Built by humans while other humans are relying on the vagaries of weather and chance for their long-term food supply. From 20K feet, that’s a huge gulf and 20K years from now, you’re liable to stumble across a CPU or phone vs a stone gristmill and get two very different views of what humans’ capability was.
I don’t think the point above was about individual heroism, but rather the spread of technological capabilities.
There were individuals and/or small groups of Homo sapiens sapiens who built highly elaborate clockwork mechanisms with dozens of gears 2000 years ago. At the same time, a significant portion of the remaining population of Homo sapiens sapiens were picking berries in the forest. Even today, some of us can build billions of microscopic transistors and arrange them on a chip to do crazy things while others of the same species are just waiting for rain so they can grow something to eat. The evolutionary history of our own kind is already looking far from linear, and it's going to become even more complicated once we take seriously the fact that a species is nowhere near homogeneous in its skills and intelligence. Some of the things we've been placing on the timeline may have been outliers in the first place.