Imagining the Sahara as an enormous green expanse almost seems like a game of fantasy. And instead, between 14,500 and 5,000 years ago, the largest desert in the world it was one savannah full of lakesanimals and human communities that lived thanks to pastoralism. It is in this scenario that two 7,000 year old mummiesfound in the rock shelter of Takarkori, in the south-west of Libya, have become the key to understanding who really inhabited that now disappeared environment.
The discovery comes from a study led by Archaeological Mission in the Sahara of the Sapienza University of Rometogether with Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzigwhich sequenced the first ancient genomes of the so-called “Green Sahara”. A complex work, published on Naturewhich today allows us to reconstruct the genetic identity of the shepherds who lived in that lost ecosystem.
A lost lineage and an unexpected link with the ancients of Morocco
The geneticist Nada Salem and his team recovered thousands of DNA fragments from teeth and bones, patiently reconstructing their biological identity. And this is where the story takes an unexpected turn: these women descended from a lineage that separated from sub-Saharan populations about 50,000 years ago, as other human groups began to migrate towards Eurasia. A line that remained hidden, surviving in North Africa like an underground watercourse that suddenly resurfaces.
One of the most surprising revelations is the genetic similarity to the hunter-gatherers of Taforalt, Morocco, who lived 15,000 years before them. Despite the enormous temporal and geographic distance, these two groups are closer to each other than to any other known population. It is a powerful clue: even when the Sahara was green and crossable, the North and South of the continent continued to experience distinct worlds. Communities moved, sure, but not enough to mix permanently.
This picture puts aside the old idea of a Sahara crowded with continuous migrations. The picture that emerges is much more nuanced: human groups living relatively isolated, yet exchanging ideas and practices with neighbors.
Little Neanderthal DNA and a shepherd’s life
The two women, naturally mummified, belonged to a human group that no longer exists: a North African genetic line that remained isolated for tens of thousands of years. In fact, DNA analysis shows that this lineage separated from the populations of sub-Saharan Africa around 50,000 years ago, the same period in which other humans left the continent to spread into Eurasia.
Their isolation was so profound that it left traces still recognizable 7,000 years later. And it is precisely this genetic continuity that tells of a North Africa that is less traversed and more autonomous than previously thought. In fact, the two women do not have sub-Saharan ancestry, a detail that dismantles the idea of the Sahara as a constant corridor between north and south. Rather, the picture that emerges is that of a network of local communities that communicate with each other, but without large population movements.
Another interesting detail is the percentage of Neanderthal DNA: just 0.15%. It is very little, especially when compared with that of current Eurasian populations, who retain ten times as much. It means that the Takarkori women descended almost entirely from groups that remained in Africa and that contact with those who had already encountered Neanderthals was rare and indirect.
Signs of a pastoral life emerged around their bodies: animal bones, tools, remains of daily activities. The picture is that of a community that raised goats, sheep and cattle, not because someone had come from far away to teach it, but because these practices had spread through cultural exchange between local groups. A passage of knowledge rather than people.
In short, the prehistory of North Africa is not the history of peoples “replaced” by others, but that of communities that learn, observe, adapt and transform their way of life.
The Green Sahara was not a margin of history: it was its pulsating center
The information recovered by Takarkori tells of a reality that was so far missing in the puzzle of human evolution: a North African population that did not follow the great migration towards Eurasia but which, however, continued to live and renew itself in the northern regions of the continent. A parallel branch, remained in the shadows for millennia.
These 7,000 year old mummies give voice to a history that has remained buried under the sand: local populations who do not undergo changes, but interpret them; groups that manage the territory, domesticate animals, transform their traditions without losing their identity.
The study, published on Naturedoes not close one mystery: it opens many others. And it reminds us that the Sahara, before becoming a hostile desert, was a surprisingly vital place, where humanity experimented, innovated and left traces that reappear today to tell us who we really were.
