by From Will Dunham
(Reuters) -The Sahara desert is one of the driest and most abandoned places on earth and extends over a series of North Africa that comprises parts of 11 countries and covers an area comparable to China or the United States. But it wasn’t always so inhospitable.
In a time of around 14,500 to 5,000 years, it was a lush green savanna that was rich in water and life. And according to the DNA, which were preserved from the remains of two people who lived in today’s Libya about 7,000 years ago, it was a mysterious line of people that were isolated from the outside world.
The researchers analyzed the first genomes of people who lived in the so -called “Green Sahara”. They received DNA from the bones of two females, which were buried in a rock home called Takarkori in the remote southwestern Libya. Of course they were mumified and represented the oldest known mummified human remains.
“At that time, Takarkori was a lavish Savannah with a nearby lake, in contrast to today’s dry desert landscape,” said archaeogenic artist Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, one of the authors of the study that was published in the Nature magazine this week.
The genomes show that the Takakori individuals were part of a pronounced and previously unidentified human descent that had lived separated from sub-Sahara and Eurasian populations for thousands of years.
“Interestingly, the Takarkori people show no significant genetic influence of population groups south of the Sahara to the southern or the Middle East and prehistoric European groups in the north. This indicates that, despite practicing animal husbandry, they remained genetically isolated – a cultural innovation that comes outside of Africa,” said Krause.
Archaeological evidence indicates that these people were pastoralists and domesticated animals huts. Artefacts found on site include tools made of stone, wood and animal bones, ceramics, woven baskets and carved figures.
The ancestors of the two Takakori individuals resigned from a North African descent, which was separated from Subsahara population groups about 50,000 years ago. This coincides roughly together with the time when other human descent lines spread beyond the continent and to the Middle East, Europe and Asia and the ancestors of all people outside of Africa are.
“The Takarkori line is probably a remnant of the genetic diversity that was available in North Africa 50,000 and 20,000 years ago,” said Krause.
“From the age of 20,000, genetic evidence show an influx of groups from the eastern Mediterranean, followed by migrations by Iberia and Sicily about 8,000 years ago. However, for reasons that were still unknown, the Takarkori line was more than expected.
Her line remained isolated during most of her existence before the Sahara became uninhabitable again. At the end of a warmer and humid climate phase called African moisture time, the Sahara turned into the world’s largest hot desert of around 3,000 BC. Chr.
Members of our species Homo Sapiens, who spread beyond Africa and have left Neanderthal populations that were already available in parts of Eurasia, and have left a permanent genetic heritage in non-African populations. But the green Sahara people only wore traces of Neanderthal -Dna and illustrated that they had little contact with external populations.
Although the Takakori population itself disappeared about 5,000 years ago when the African moisture ended and the desert returned, the traces of their ancestors today exist among various North African groups, said Krause.
“Your genetic heritage offers a new perspective on the deep history of the region,” said Krause.
(Reporting according to Will Dunham in Washington; Editor of Daniel Wallis)
