In the central Sahara, where sand now buries ancient lakes, scientists have pulled genetic material from 7,000-year-old mummified women and found DNA that does not match any living population. The sequences are recognizably human, yet they trace to a lineage that appears to have vanished, leaving no direct descendants in today’s genomes. The discovery has fueled viral claims of “nonhuman” or even “alien” DNA, but the real story is stranger and more revealing than any science fiction script.
The remains, recovered from rock shelters and caves in what is now southwest Libya, capture a moment when the “green Sahara” supported pastoralists, wildlife and complex societies. By sequencing these genomes in unprecedented detail, researchers have uncovered a ghost branch of humanity that was genetically isolated for tens of thousands of years, then disappeared without merging into the gene pool of modern North Africans or Sub-Saharan Africans. I see this as less a story about monsters in the desert and more about how incomplete our picture of our own species still is.
The desert mummies that should not exist
The starting point is the simple fact that these bodies survived at all. Two naturally preserved women, each more than 7,000 years old, were found in exceptional condition in a remote cave in North West Africa, their skin and soft tissues desiccated rather than decayed. In the Takarkori rock shelter of southwest Libya, additional skeletons from the same era were excavated from layers that also contained animal bones and artifacts from a once-lush landscape. Archaeologists had already suspected that this “green Sahara” supported early pastoralists, but the preservation of these women, effectively mummified by the desert climate, offered a rare chance to test that idea at the molecular level.
When geneticists extracted material from the bones and teeth, they were not expecting miracles. Heat and time usually shred ancient DNA into useless fragments, especially in the tropics. Yet a team working with these Takarkori remains managed to recover whole genomes from 7,000-year-old individuals who had lived when the Sahara Desert still held lakes, hippos and elephants. The women were pastoralists, buried with evidence of a herding lifestyle, but their genetic signatures did not resemble those of any modern herding communities in North Africa or beyond.
A hidden North African lineage with “ghost” ancestry
As the genomes came into focus, the surprise was not that these people were human, but that they were so unlike any humans alive today. The sequences showed that the Takarkori individuals carried a previously unknown ancestral North African component that dominates their genetic profile. In the technical language of the main study, the authors wrote that Our findings show that these individuals predominantly carry a previously unknown ancestral North African lineage, with only small traces of Levantine admixture. In other words, they were part of a population that had been isolated for a very long time, with only minor genetic input from groups to the east.
Independent coverage of the work has described this as a “ghost” branch of humanity, a population inferred from DNA but never seen in living form. One analysis of this 7,000-year-old mummy DNA notes that this group then remained genetically isolated from other groups of humans for tens of thousands of years, never found in the flesh until these mummies were sequenced. That isolation helps explain why their genetic profile looks so alien to modern eyes: it is not that they were nonhuman, but that they represent a branch of Homo sapiens that never contributed significantly to the ancestry of people living today.
“Don’t share DNA with modern humans” and what that really means
Once the first results were public, social media seized on a striking phrase: that these 7,000-year-old women “don’t share DNA with modern humans.” A widely shared post claimed that Scientists found 7,000-year-old mummies that share no DNA connection with modern humans and that They deny genetic expectations. A more detailed write-up echoed that framing, stating that Scientists Found 7,000-Year-Old Mummies in the Desert That Don’t Share DNA With Modern Humans. Taken literally, that wording suggests these individuals were not human at all, which is not what the underlying genetics shows.
What the researchers actually found is that the Takarkori genomes lack the characteristic signatures of present-day North African and Sub-Saharan populations. The Takarkori individuals are described as a distinct group in southwest Libya, and one report notes that the Takarkori individuals are actually more closely related to an ancestral North African lineage than to any modern group, which is why they appear disconnected from today’s genomes. When commentators say they “don’t share DNA,” they are really pointing to the absence of overlap with current populations, not to an absence of human genes altogether. Every sequenced fragment still fits comfortably within the range of Homo sapiens variation.
Reconstructing life in the “green Sahara”
To understand why this lineage looks so isolated, it helps to picture the environment these women inhabited. Earlier this year, researchers working with skeletons from southwest Libya used Ancient DNA from the Takarkori site to show that the Sahara once hosted communities whose genetic history diverged sharply from later North Africans. Archaeological layers from the same region contain remains of fish, cattle and wild fauna, confirming that the Sahara Desert was once dotted with lakes and grasslands. One synthesis of the work notes that Scientists recovered whole genomes from 7,000-year-old Saharan mummies and that DNA extracted from two pastoralist women revealed a population that had developed largely in place.
Other accounts emphasize that these people lived when the Sahara Desert still supported hippopotamuses and elephants, a far cry from the hyper-arid dunes we see Today. A detailed feature on the same research describes how 7,000-year-old mummy DNA reveals a ghost branch of humanity that thrived in this wetter phase, then vanished as the climate shifted and the desert expanded. In that context, the genetic isolation of the Takarkori women makes sense: they were part of a community hemmed in by geography and climate, with limited contact with other human groups until environmental change forced migrations that may have erased their distinct lineage.
From “lost society” to viral “alien DNA” claims
As more details emerged, some scientists began to describe the Takarkori group as a lost society from the Sahara, a population that had left almost no trace in modern genomes. One analysis of the work on DNA From 7,000-Year-Old Old Mummies Reveals Lost Society From Sahara notes that Two ancient mummies reveal a mysterious, isolated lineage in Nor th Africa and that about 7,000 years ago, in this green phase, their story diverged from the main narrative of our species. Another report on Two 7,000-year-old mummified women highlights that their strange DNA profiles do not match any modern population, reinforcing the sense of a vanished people rather than a living lineage.
On social platforms, that nuance often evaporated. A viral group post framed the discovery as 7,000 year old mummies found in Sahara desert with unknown dna, stating that Two mummies, aged over 7,000 years, were discovered in an excellent condition of preservation and that their evolution has opened us again to a forgotten branch of humanity. Another post went further, invoking “alien” DNA hidden deep within human genes and claiming that researchers had found fragments of genetic code that do not match the DNA of humans, animals or even known microbes. That summary of DNA research correctly notes that this so-called “alien” DNA does not come from extraterrestrials in spaceships, but it has been eagerly folded into speculation about the Saharan mummies, even though the underlying studies focus on ancient viral insertions in the broader human genome, not on the Takarkori women specifically.
More from Morning Overview