Science
Ancient Mummies Uncover Lost Branch Of Human Evolution Hidden For Thousands Of Years
The human family tree may be altered by startling DNA results from two mummies found in Northern Africa.
Researchers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute discovered that the DNA of an unidentified 7,000-year-old human group was present in these ancient bodies discovered in modern-day Libya.
The unique genetic composition of this extinct group in the Sahara Desert differed greatly from what experts anticipated discovering among ancient humans who traveled in and out of Africa.
The Green Sahara was a beautiful, verdant desert region that existed between 5,000 and 14,500 years ago.
Because of this, scientists think that early humans in this region would have had greater interactions with other human tribes that came from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.
Rather, it seems that this extinct group has cut itself apart from all other human groups that are moving to the Green Sahara.
Researchers’ presumptions about the ancient world and the degree of cultural mixing were challenged when they discovered that the mummy DNA contained substantially less Neanderthal DNA than that of ancient people who lived outside of Africa during that time.
“Our research challenges previous assumptions about North African population history and highlights the existence of a deeply rooted and long-isolated genetic lineage,” stated first author Nada Salem of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The skeletons, which were discovered in the Takarkori rock shelter in southwest Libya, were recognized as belonging to two women.
These ladies were closely genetically related to a group of scavengers from 15,000 years ago rather than to contemporary populations from Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
According to the German researchers, during the last Ice Age, these foragers resided in caverns in modern-day Morocco.
The DNA composition of the Ice Age population and the recently found Green Saharan mummies differs greatly from that of sub-Saharan Africans.
Even while this lush area gave the communities plenty of chance to come into contact and eventually interbreed, this seems to demonstrate that the two populations on the continent remained largely isolated.
Only a tiny amount of Neandertal DNA is present in the Takarkori mummies compared to 7,000-year-old humans discovered outside of Africa; this is significantly less than the one to two percent present in farmers in the Middle East during that time.
This distinct human ancestry no longer exists in the present world in its original form, according to researchers.
Today, the Takarkori mummies’ DNA merely contributes to a portion of the larger genetic puzzle that is human.
“This ancestry is still a central genetic component of present-day North African people, highlighting their unique heritage,” the team clarified.
According to a study that was published in the journal Nature, the mummies demonstrate how early agricultural methods spread by one group teaching others how to produce and herd livestock. This alters the narrative of early human history.
The lost group of humans learnt new ideas and shared their own with outsiders through a process called cultural diffusion, but they hardly ever married or cohabitated.
According to this view, animal herding began in the Sahara between 7,000 and 8,000 years ago. Ancient visitors from the Middle East are probably the source of those concepts.
People adopted this lifestyle because the grassy plains and water supplies in the Green Sahara were ideal for grazing animals.
The study concluded that it is evident from the genetic results of the Takarkori mummies that the Middle Eastern farmers did not settle in this region permanently.
This’migration idea’ would have suggested that herders from the Middle East brought their genes into the Green Sahara with their animals, so altering the local population’s DNA.
But none of this seems to have happened, and because herding was a practical skill rather than a cultural invasion, it actually extended over Northern Africa.
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