This 7,000-year-old mummy DNA has revealed a 'ghost' branch of humanity

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Thu Apr 3, 2025, 06:43 PM - Edit history (1)

This 7,000-year-old mummy DNA has revealed a ‘ghost’ branch of humanity
Ancient remains hidden in a Libyan cave have opened the door to a long lost human lineage


Archaeological Mission in the Sahara, Sapienza University of Rome

Tom Howarth
Published: April 2, 2025 at 11:00 am

Today, the Sahara Desert is one of the most inhospitable places on our planet. But it wasn’t always this way.

Roll the clock back 7,000 years, and the Sahara was a lush, green savannah, teeming with wildlife, dotted with lakes – including one the size of modern-day Germany. It was, in other words, the perfect place for our ancient ancestors to settle.

But who were they? We might finally know.

Scientists have successfully analysed the DNA of two naturally mummified individuals from the Takarkori rock shelter, in what is now southwestern Libya. Their findings reveal something extraordinary: these ancient people belonged to a previously unknown branch of the human family tree.

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The two women belonged to a so-called 'ghost population' – one that had only ever been glimpsed as faint genetic echoes in modern humans, but never found in the flesh.

“These samples come from some of the oldest mummies in the world,” Prof Johannes Krause, senior author of the new study, told BBC Science Focus. It is, he explained, remarkable that genome sequencing was possible at all, given hot conditions tend to degrade such information.

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[AllaN01Bear]

1. interistingk

every time i hear about these finds , i think back to a 1980s tv show called battlestar galacticand its lovely main thme.
there may yet brothers of man fightning among the heavens .