By Will Dunham
(Reuters) -The desert desert is one of the most arid places on Earth and the explosion, and it extends through a group of North Africa that extends over parts of 11 countries and covers a similar region to China or the United States. But it was not always very hidden.
During a period of about 14,500 to 5,000 years, lush green savanna was rich in water bodies and wandering in life. According to the DNA obtained from the remains of two people who lived about 7,000 years ago in what is now known to Libya, it was home to a mysterious dynasty of people isolated from the outside world.
The researchers analyzed the first genomics of people who lived in the so -called “green desert”. They obtained the DNA from the bones of two female buried in a rock shelter called Takarcori in the southwest of the remote. She was naturally mummified, and represented the oldest human remains.
“At that time, the lush Savanna Takarkori with a near lake, unlike the arid desert scene today,” said the genetic scientist, Johannes Kraos of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, one of the authors of the study published this week in the Journal of Nature.
Genesoms reveal that Takarkori members were part of distinguished and unlimited human proportions before they lived separated from sub -Saharan population and the Persians for thousands of years.
“It is interesting that the Takarkori people do not show any great genetic influence from the sub -Saharan population to the south or the lower of Eastern European and pre -history groups to the north. This indicates that they remained isolated geneticism despite the practice of animal raising – a cultural innovation that arose outside Africa.”
Archaeological evidence indicates that these people were shepherds and grazing domesticated animals. The artifacts on the site include tools made of stone bones, wood, animals, pottery, woven baskets and sculpted statues.
It was found that the origin of Takarkori was derived from the lineage of North Africa, which has separated from the South Sahara population about 50,000 years ago. This almost coincides when other human lineage is spread beyond the continent and to the Middle East, Europe and Asia – to become the ancestors of all people outside Africa.
“It is possible that the levels of Takarkori will represent the remains of the genetic diversity in North Africa between 50,000 and 20,000 years.”
“By 20,000 years, upward, genetic evidence shows a flow of groups from the eastern Mediterranean, followed by migrations from Iberia and Sicily about 8,000 years ago. However, for reasons that are still unknown, Takarcori ratios are still uncertain,” Humland is still indigenous, “the original Humland still does not remain.”
Their lineage remained isolated throughout most of its existence before the desert became uninterrupted again. At the end of the warmer and wicked climate stage, the African wet period is called the desert to the largest hot desert in the world approximately 3000 BC.
Members of our genus Homo Sapiens who spread beyond Africa faced and spread with the primitive population who are already in parts of Eurasia, leaving a permanent genetic legacy in the non -African population today. But the people of the Green Desert carried only small amounts of primitive DNA, showing that they had little contact with the external population.
Although the residents of Takarkori himself have disappeared about 5,000 years ago when the African wet period ended and the Sahara returned, the effects of their ancestors continue between the various northern African groups today, Cross said.
“Their genetic heritage provides a new perspective on the deep history of the region,” said Kraos.
(Participated in Will Doneham reports in Washington; Al -Tahrir by Daniel Walis)
