Two mummies reveal a human lineage lived in isolation in the Green Sahara 7,000 years ago

[Judi Lynn]

1. Sahara desert, once lush and green, was home to mysterious human lineage

By WILL DUNHAM, Reuters
Published April 5, 2025 5:12pm

The Sahara Desert is one of Earth's most arid and desolate places, stretching across a swathe of North Africa that spans parts of 11 countries and covers an area comparable to China or the United States. But it has not always been so inhospitable.

During a period from about 14,500 to 5,000 years ago, it was a lush green savannah rich in bodies of water and teeming with life. And, according to DNA obtained from the remains of two individuals who lived about 7,000 years ago in what is now Libya, it was home to a mysterious lineage of people isolated from the outside world.

Researchers analyzed the first genomes from people who lived in what is called the "Green Sahara." They obtained DNA from the bones of two females buried at a rock shelter called Takarkori in remote southwestern Libya. They were naturally mummified, representing the oldest-known mummified human remains.

"At the time, Takarkori was a lush savannah with a nearby lake, unlike today's arid desert landscape," said archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, one of the authors of the study published this week in the journal Nature.

Read more:
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/scitech/science/941771/sahara-desert-once-lush-and-green-was-home-to-mysterious-human-lineage/story/

~ ~ ~



Takarkori rock shelter (SW Libya): an archive of Holocene climate and environmental changes in the central Sahara

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027737911400273X

~ ~ ~


Takarkori Wikipedia:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takarkori

~ ~ ~

Thanks to cbabe for catching this news. Tremendous!