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Here’s what you’ll learn as you read this story:
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Two seven-thousand-year-old mummies from a group of previously unknown lineages have been found at the Takarkori Rock Shelter in the Sahara.
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DNA analysis of the mummies, which are the remains of female herders from a time when the Sahara was wetter and known as the Green Sahara, did not show the expected sub-Saharan genes.
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The Takarkori people are very closely related to other North African peoples who separated from sub-Saharan populations long ago.
While the Sahara is now a vast expanse of sand where the battle for survival can be brutal, there was a time (hard to believe) when it was actually green and thriving.
Between 14,800 and 5,500 years ago, known as the African Humid Period, the desert, known as one of the driest places on Earth, actually had enough water to support a way of life. At that time, it was a savanna that early human populations settled to take advantage of favorable farming conditions. One of them was a mysterious people who lived in what is now southwestern Libya and must have been genetically sub-Saharan – except, in modern analysis, their genes did not reflect that.
Led by archaeologist Nada Salem of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, a team of researchers analyzed the genes of two 7,000-year-old naturally preserved mummies of Neolithic female shepherds from the Takarkori rock shelter. Although genetic material does not preserve well in dry climates, so much about ancient human populations in the Sahara remains a mystery, there were enough fragments of DNA to give insight into their past.
“The majority lineage of Takakori individuals originated from a previously unknown North African genetic lineage that diverged from sub-Saharan African lineages similar to present-day humans outside of Africa and remained isolated for most of its existence,” they said in a study recently published in Nature.
The Takarkori individuals are actually close relatives of the 15,000-year-old Chara from Taforalt Cave in Morocco. Both lineages have roughly the same genetic distance from sub-Saharan groups that existed during that period, suggesting that there was not much gene flow between sub-Saharan and North Africa. Taforalt people also have half the Neanderthal genes of non-Africans, while Takarkori have ten times less. What’s strange is that they still have more Neanderthal DNA than other sub-Saharan people who were around at the time.
The Takarkori apparently had less contact with Neanderthals than the Taforalt, they must have somehow had more contact than other groups in their region. There are also traces of evidence of admixture with the farmers of the Levant. Otherwise, Tukarkori’s genes show that they are mostly isolated. They were genetically close to Northwest African foragers such as Taforalt but otherwise distinct from sub-Saharan populations.
This may simply mean that there was not much genetic exchange in the Green Sahara during the African humid period. Farming practices were believed to have spread to the region through migration. Salem’s team has another explanation.
“Our findings suggest that pastoralism spread through cultural diffusion in a deeply differentiated, isolated North African lineage that was probably widespread in North Africa during the Late Pleistocene,” they said in the same study.
Cultivation appears to have spread through the exchange of practices between cultures rather than admixture resulting from migration. The takarkoris are thought to have derived their genes from a hunter-gatherer group that predates the introduction of animal husbandry and agriculture. Although hunter-gatherers, Takarkori’s ancestors advanced in the manufacture of vessels, baskets and tools made from wood and bone. They also stayed together for a long time.
The reason why takarkori lives alone may be related to the diversity of environments in the Green Sahara. These ranged from lakes and wetlands to woodlands to grasslands, savannas and mountains. Such differences in habitat were barriers to interaction between human populations.
There may be mummies or artifacts hidden somewhere in the sands of the Sahara and the sands of time to tell us more about what life was like before the desert dried up.
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