Two naturally mummified individuals buried roughly 7,000 years ago in a Libyan rock shelter have yielded ancient genomes that reveal a previously unknown, long-isolated North African lineage. The finding has circulated online under sensational framing suggesting the DNA is somehow “nonhuman,” but the genetic material is entirely human. What makes it remarkable is not alien origin but rather the degree to which this population remained genetically distinct from neighboring groups across millennia, offering a rare window into a period when the Sahara was green, wet, and capable of sustaining settled communities.
Ancient Genomes From the Green Sahara
The study, described in a peer-reviewed paper in Nature, sequenced ancient genomes from two individuals recovered at the Takarkori rock shelter in southwestern Libya. These remains date to approximately 7,000 years ago, a period when the central Sahara received far more rainfall than it does today. Lake systems, grasslands, and seasonal rivers supported human populations that left behind rock art, pottery, and, in this case, naturally preserved burials. The arid conditions that eventually overtook the region ironically helped preserve biological material that would normally degrade within centuries, giving researchers access to genetic information of unusual quality for African ancient DNA studies.
Extracting usable DNA from remains this old, especially in a hot climate, is exceptionally difficult. African ancient DNA has lagged behind European and Asian datasets partly because heat accelerates molecular breakdown and because political and logistical challenges have limited excavation and export of samples. The Takarkori genomes therefore fill a significant gap. They represent some of the oldest successfully sequenced human genomes from North Africa, and their analysis points to a population that experienced minimal genetic mixing with groups to the south, east, or across the Mediterranean for an extended stretch of prehistory. As the authors of the Takarkori analysis emphasize, the genetic profile they recovered does not closely match any known modern population, underscoring how much ancient diversity has been lost or diluted over time.
A Distinct Lineage, Not an Alien One
The viral claim that these mummies contain “nonhuman DNA” is a distortion of what the research actually shows. The genomes belong to anatomically modern humans, fitting squarely within the range of Homo sapiens variation. Their distinctiveness lies in the fact that this North African lineage appears to have been isolated for a prolonged period, accumulating genetic variation that does not closely match other known ancient or modern populations. In population genetics, such groups are sometimes called “ghost populations” because their genetic signature is inferred from ancient samples or from statistical patterns rather than observed directly in living descendants. The term can sound dramatic, but it simply describes a branch of the human family tree that left few or no clearly identifiable modern descendants, at least based on current sampling.
Labeling human genetic variation as “nonhuman” feeds conspiracy theories and misrepresents how genomics works. Every living person carries DNA segments inherited from populations that no longer exist as discrete groups. Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry in modern Eurasians is a well-known example of how lineages can diverge and later mix without implying anything supernatural. The Takarkori finding is conceptually similar in that it identifies a human lineage whose contributions to later populations may have been diluted, absorbed, or geographically restricted as the Sahara dried out and communities migrated or merged. Calling that “nonhuman” confuses genetic distance with species difference, two very separate concepts. Genetic distance measures how long lineages have been separated and how much they have drifted apart, not whether they belong to different species.
What the Green Sahara Preserved
The environmental context matters as much as the genetics. Between roughly 11,000 and 5,000 years ago, orbital shifts in Earth’s tilt increased monsoon rainfall across the Sahara, turning vast stretches of desert into habitable savanna. This African Humid Period, often referred to as the Green Sahara, allowed human populations to expand into areas that are now uninhabitable sand seas. Takarkori sits in the Acacus Mountains of southwestern Libya, a region rich in rock art depicting cattle, wildlife, and daily life from this wetter era. Archaeological work at the site has documented layers of occupation spanning thousands of years, with evidence of shifting subsistence strategies as the climate gradually changed.
The natural mummification of the two individuals likely resulted from the shelter’s dry microclimate combined with burial practices that limited moisture exposure and microbial activity. While the primary genetic study focuses on sequencing and population history rather than burial artifacts or detailed dietary reconstruction, earlier excavations at Takarkori have produced evidence of early pastoralism, plant processing, and a mixed foraging–herding economy. The genomes, then, come from people who lived during a transitional moment: the tail end of a green Sahara that was beginning its slow shift back toward aridity. That ecological pressure may have helped shape the population’s isolation, as drying conditions could have fragmented communities, restricted mobility along shrinking water corridors, and reduced gene flow between scattered groups that once shared more continuous habitats.
Gaps in the Genetic Map of Africa
One of the broader implications of this research is how little we still know about ancient genetic diversity across Africa. Most ancient DNA studies have concentrated on Europe, western Asia, and parts of East Africa, where cooler climates and long-standing research infrastructure have favored preservation and sampling. North Africa, the Sahel, and central Africa remain severely undersampled, not because people were absent, but because DNA preservation is challenging and political instability has limited fieldwork in many areas. The Takarkori genomes hint at how much diversity existed in regions where preservation conditions and security constraints have hampered systematic study. If a single rock shelter in Libya can produce evidence of a previously undetected lineage, it is reasonable to expect that future sampling from other Saharan and sub-Saharan sites will continue to reshape the picture of human migration and admixture on the continent.
The question of whether this ancestral North African lineage has living descendants remains open. Some researchers have speculated about possible genetic connections between ancient Saharan groups and modern Amazigh (Berber) populations based on geography and archaeological continuity, but the primary study does not make that claim directly. Drawing a straight line from a 7,000-year-old genome to any modern ethnic group requires dense comparative data from both ancient and present-day populations, as well as careful modeling of multiple migration and admixture events. What the Takarkori work does establish is that North Africa harbored genetically distinct populations during the mid-Holocene, populations whose history cannot be reconstructed from modern DNA alone. Without ancient genomes like these, such lineages would remain invisible, their existence only weakly hinted at by unexplained patterns in contemporary genetic variation.
Why Sensational Framing Undermines Real Science
The gap between what this study found and how it has been presented online reflects a recurring problem in science communication. Genomic research produces results that are technically precise but easy to mischaracterize, especially when terms like “divergent,” “basal,” or “deeply split” are taken out of context. A phrase such as “ancestral lineage with limited admixture” does not generate clicks the way “nonhuman DNA” does. Yet the sensational version actively misleads readers, suggesting something extraterrestrial or supernatural when the actual finding is a story about human adaptation, migration, and isolation during a period of dramatic climate change. Misrepresentation also erodes trust: when audiences eventually learn that the supposed “alien” DNA is entirely human, they may become more skeptical of legitimate but less flashy discoveries.
The real story here is more interesting than the fabricated one. A human population survived in the Sahara for thousands of years, genetically distinct from its neighbors, during a window when the desert was green and dotted with lakes and grasslands. As the rains retreated, that population’s genetic signature faded from the broader human gene pool, leaving behind only faint traces and a pair of remarkably preserved burials in a Libyan rock shelter. Far from implying anything nonhuman, the Takarkori genomes highlight how complex, fragmented, and contingent human history has been—and how much of that history can only be recovered through careful, unsensationalized collaboration between archaeologists, geneticists, and the communities whose past is being studied.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
