Archaeology breakthrough as unknown human lineage discovered in 'green Sahara desert'

The mummified remains date back to around 7,000 years ago (Image: Archaeological Mission in the Sahara/Sapienza University of Rome)

An archaeology breakthrough has been made after a previously unknown human lineage that lived in the "green Sahara" in Africa was discovered through two 7,000-year-old mummies.

DNA revealed the two mummified women were from never-before-seen isolated populations living during the African Humid Period, when the now-inhospitable Sahara was a humid and lush savanna. During that time between 14,500 to 5,000 years ago, humans hunted and eventually herded animals alongside lakes and rivers in sub-Saharan Africa. It has helped develop a new understanding of the isolated Takarkori people, finding they had some ancestry from the Levant, a stretch of land bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It also showed traces of Neanderthal ancestry which lived outside of Africa in Eurasia.

The Takarkori rock shelter in southern Libya (Image: Archaeological Mission in the Sahara/Sapienza University of Rome)

"We know now that they were isolated in terms of genetics, but not in cultural terms," study co-author Savino di Lernia, an archaeologist at Sapienza University of Rome, told CNN.

The report published in the journal Nature suggested there was little genetic exchange across the green Sahara during this period, though some cultural practices may have spread through the region.

"There's a lot of networks that we know from several parts of the continent, because we have pottery coming from sub-Saharan Africa. We have pottery coming from the Nile Valley and the like."

Archaeologists uncovered the remains of 15 women and children at The Takarkori rock shelter site two decades ago, in southwestern Libya’s Tadrart Acacus mountains.

New techniques made it possible to sequence the genome - a complete set of genetic material - of the two mummified women.

Researchers extracted preserved DNA from the remains and compared it with DNA from about 800 present-day individuals from Africa and southern Europe, as well as 117 ancient genomes from the same regions.

"We were very fortunate to have samples preserved at this level," study co-author Nada Salem, a paleogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, told Science magazine.

DNA is normally best preserved in cool and constant conditions, the opposite of the extremities of the region.