A GROUNDBREAKING discovery of two mummies has revealed a previously unknown human ancestor from over 7,000 years ago.
The skeletons have sent shock waves across the scientific community – after it was revealed their DNA could alter the family tree of human history.
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Scientists from the Max Planck Institute in Germany unearthed the ancient mummified corpses in Libya.
The fascinating North African beings are thought to have roamed the Sahara Desert thousands of years ago.
Their genetic makeup was shockingly different to what scientists usually expect to find among ancient humans travelling around Africa.
Between 5,000 and 14,500 years ago, the desert area was lush and fertile, and known as the Green Sahara.
This led researchers to believe that ancient humans living here may have interacted more with humans travelling from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
But in a shocking twist, this group appears to have been almost completely isolated from the outside world – according to their DNA.
They seemingly separated themselves from other human populations travelling to the Green Sahara.
It contradicts previous interpretations that the Green Sahara was not a migration corridor between North and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The groundbreaking new mummy DNA had significantly less Neanderthal DNA than ancient humans living outside Africa during this era.
This challenges researchers’ assumptions about how much different cultures mingled in the ancient world.
Scientist Nada Salem from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology said that their research “challenges previous assumptions about North African population history”.
She also said that it revealed the “existence of a deeply rooted and long-isolated genetic lineage”.
Scientists identified the skeletons as two women.
They were buried in the Takarkori rock shelter in southwestern Libya.
But the pair did not have a similar genetic makeup to modern humans from Africa, the Middle East, or Europe.
They instead possessed close genetic ties to a specific group of scavengers who roamed the Earth 15,000 years ago.
This similar group of foragers lived in caves around present-day Morocco during the last Ice Age.
Both the Green Sahara group and the Ice Age group share a genetic makeup which is totally different to that of sub-Saharan Africans.
This seemingly shows that the two populations on Africa stayed relatively separate – despite this fertile region providing a greater opportunity for different communities to meet and interbreed.
A comparison between the new female skeletons and humans in Africa 7,000 years ago also shows stark differences.
The Takarkori mummies only possess a small trace of Neandertal DNA – while Middle Eastern farmers of the same period often had one to two percent.
The shocked researchers also noted that this unique line of humans no longer exists in its original form in today’s modern world.
The groundbreaking finding only makes up a small part of the greater genetic puzzle in humans today.
The German boffins said of the two mummies: “This ancestry is still a central genetic component of present-day North African people, highlighting their unique heritage.”
The study also argued the mummies proved that early agricultural practices spread by one group teaching others how to farm livestock.
This practice, known as cultural diffusion, means that the group learned new ideas and shared their own with outsiders, but rarely interbred or lived together.
Based on this theory, people in the Sahara started farming and herding livestock around 7,000 to 8,000 years ago.
And those ideas likely came from ancient travellers coming from the Middle East.
The lush and grassy plains of the Green Sahara made it ideal for grazing animals, so it made sense for locals to adopt this lifestyle.
