When we think of the Sahara, we imagine immense sand dunes, a blazing sun, and a hostile environment. Yet, this landscape hasn’t always existed. Thousands of years ago, during a period known as the “African Humid Period,” the Sahara was a verdant savanna, full of lakes, animals… and humans. It was in this setting that the Takarkori lived. Recently, the discovery of two 7,000-year-old mummies of this people has completely revolutionized what scientists thought they knew about the ancient inhabitants of North Africa. Their DNA is unlike anything previously known.
The discovery of two exceptional mummies
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Finding ancient DNA in the desert is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The heat and drought usually destroy any trace of genetic material. But this time, luck was on the researchers’ side. In a rock shelter called Takarkori, in what is now southwestern Libya, they found the bodies of two Neolithic women, herders, naturally mummified and exceptionally well preserved. Scientists from the Max Planck Insтιтute for Evolutionary Anthropology managed to extract enough DNA fragments to reconstruct part of their genetic history.
A major surprise: a completely unknown genetic lineage.
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Scientists expected to find DNA typical of sub-Saharan African populations. But the result was a complete surprise. The analysis, reported in the journal Popular Mechanics, revealed that “the majority of the ancestry of the Takarkori individuals comes from a previously unknown North African genetic lineage.” This lineage is believed to have separated from other African groups a very, very long time ago, around the same time that the ancestors of non-African humans (Europeans, Asians, etc.) left Africa. And most astonishingly, this population appears to have remained isolated for thousands of years.
A link with Morocco and a complex history with Neanderthals
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Researchers also discovered that the DNA of these mummies was very similar to that of other very ancient individuals discovered in the Taforalt cave in Morocco, dating back 15,000 years. This suggests that there was very little intermingling between the peoples of North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa at that time. The other fascinating discovery concerns Neanderthals. It is known that non-African humans have some Neanderthal DNA. The Takarkori individuals had ten times less, but still more than other sub-Saharan populations. This shows that they had contact, however distant, with populations that had interbred with Neanderthals, probably from the Near East.
Agriculture and animal husbandry: a cultural diffusion, not a migration
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This discovery challenges another major theory. It was thought that agriculture and animal husbandry spread throughout North Africa through migrations of peoples from the Near East. But the Takarkori DNA tells a different story. It seems that this hunter-gatherer people, already present in the region for millennia, simply adopted these new techniques through cultural diffusion, without mixing with the newcomers. It was the know-how that traveled, not the people. They likely inherited their genes from a very ancient group of local hunter-gatherers.
Why did they remain so isolated?
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But how could this people have remained so genetically isolated for so long? The answer likely lies in the landscape of the time. The verdant Sahara was not a vast, easily traversed plain. It was dotted with lakes, rivers, wetlands, and mountains. These natural barriers could have made travel difficult and isolated different communities from one another, allowing them to develop a unique genetic idenтιтy over millennia.
In conclusion: the Sahara still has so many secrets to reveal.
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This discovery is fascinating. It proves that human history is far more complex and diverse than we ever imagined. The Sahara, once thought to be empty, was in fact the cradle of a unique chapter in our history. Who knows how many more mummies and genetic secrets still lie buried beneath the sand? Each new discovery helps us piece together the grand puzzle of our origins and reminds us that our past is full of surprises. The desert has not finished telling us its stories.
