Photo by Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash (illustrative)
On 2 April 2025, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Sapienza University of Rome published in Nature the first ancient genomes from the Sahara's green period. They came from two naturally mummified women buried about 7,000 years ago in the Takarkori rock shelter in southwestern Libya.
Key facts
Between about 14,500 and 5,000 years ago, the world's largest desert was a humid, savanna-like landscape where people lived and herded animals.
Most of the women's ancestry came from a previously unknown North African lineage that split from sub-Saharan lineages around the time modern humans spread out of Africa.
They were closely related to 15,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Taforalt Cave in Morocco.
They carried ten times less Neanderthal ancestry than early farmers from the Levant.
Why it matters
These are the first ancient genomes ever recovered from the Green Sahara, filling a blank spot on the map of early human history. They show that herding reached this isolated population through the spread of ideas and practices, not a large migration.
Worth noting
The findings rest on just two individuals from a single site, and the lineage they belonged to is now extinct. More ancient DNA from across the Sahara would help test the picture.