Between 14,800 and 5,500 years ago—during the African Humid Period—what we now call the Sahara was a lush savanna. It had lakes, wetlands, trees, and apparently a group of mysterious humans who don’t share DNA with any modern humans.
Popular Mechanics reported on a team led by archaeogeneticist Nada Salem at the Max Planck Institute. They discovered the two mummified women found in the Takarkori rock shelter in southwestern Libya, dating back 7,000 years.
The researchers dug deep into their ancient DNA and found that these women weren’t genetically Sub-Saharan at all. They belonged to a previously unknown North African lineage that broke off from Sub-Saharan populations way before anyone was naming continents.
Ancient Mummies That Don’t Share DNA With Modern Humans Found by Scientists
This genetic line appears to have stayed more or less isolated for thousands of years, through one of the most dynamic periods in early human development. While most scientists assumed farming and herding spread through wave after wave of migration, the Takarkori story says otherwise.
It appears that herding spread through cultural diffusion, rather than gene swapping. These people picked up pastoralism in the way trends today spread through TikTok and Instagram, not because anyone moved in and taught them how. Cultures and people of diverse backgrounds mixed and naturally exchanged ideas. Change was not forced upon them.
The Takarkori women’s DNA links them to the Taforalt Cave foragers of Morocco, another ancient North African group with an equally strange genetic makeup. Both populations had barely any Neanderthal DNA. Less than non-Africans but still more than the Sub-Saharan populations of the time.
Isolation can likely be blamed on geography. The Green Sahara wasn’t a flat expanse. It was filled with lakes, mountains, forests, and deserts, all crammed together. Those natural barriers likely kept human groups apart long enough for their genes to splinter off into different directions.
The post Newly Discovered Ancient Mummies Don’t Share DNA With Modern Humans appeared first on VICE.
