Green Oasis: During a period known as the African Wet period, the desert was believed to be lush savanna.Credit
The desert desert has not always been the arid and uncleal scene that we know today. Between 14500 and 5,000 years, the region was unknown, and turned into a lush savana with an unusual wet separator called the African wet period. People wandered in this green scene for thousands of years before it was lost again to the sand.
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The old DNA extracted from two women has died in what is now known as Libya about 7000 years ago helps researchers to rebuild the origins of these early desert. DNA features for women, described in a study published on April 2 in nature1The first full magician genomics of the African period – and revealed that people were significantly isolated from the other African population.
“Pre -history in North Africa is a great mystery, and we have only a few of the pieces available,” says Rosa Friegel, a genetic specialist at La Laguna University in Saint -Cristopal, Spain, who did not participate in the research. She says this work is a “great contribution to the Bionom flag in North Africa.”
Precious generators
It is difficult to obtain old genomics from North Africa. Almost all short works are concentrated in Europe and Asia. Old DNA is particularly rare in the desert, where high temperatures and ultraviolet light are weakened quickly.
Takarkori Rock refuge in Libya, where the remains were discovered.Credit: Roma University La Sabinza
That is why it is important to explore protected sites from the elements, says Salem, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
One of these sites is the Takarkori Rock shelter in southwestern Libya. Between 2003 and 2007, archaeologists discovered the remains of 15 people who were buried between 8900 and 4800 years in Takarkori. Two of the bodies – both of them belonged to women who lived between 7000 and 6000 years – were naturally confused.
Archaeological evidence on the site indicates that Takarkori women belong to a group of sponsors who appeared in the region about 8,000 years ago. This represents a great transition in the way of the life of the first desert, who were all fishermen before. Some researchers suggested that the desert learned grazing through the symmetry with people who were migrating to North Africa from the Levant.
To test this, Salem and her colleagues have sequences of Takarkori genomics and compared the DNA to about 800 modern humans and 117 ancient genes from all over Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East. The team found that Takarkori women had only small traces of Sham origin – indicating that any conclusion had occurred a long time before grazing appeared in the area.
What’s more, he struggled with the analysis to link these early deserts to any other old group. “This was confusing to us. How did this lineage spread to the east, west, or the south?” Salem says.