Did you know the Sahara Desert, now one of Earth’s harshest wastelands, was once a lush, green paradise—and home to a mysterious people whose DNA is rewriting history?

Imagine stumbling upon two 7,000-year-old mummies in Libya’s Takarkori rock shelter, only to discover they belong to a completely unknown branch of ancient humanity. That’s exactly what a team led by archaeogeneticist Nada Salem at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has done, shaking up everything we thought we knew about human ancestry and the history of the Green Sahara.

To set the scene, the Sahara wasn’t always 9 million square kilometers of relentless sand. Between 14,800 and 5,500 years ago, the African Humid Period transformed it into a grassy, lake-strewn savannah, perfect for early humans to settle, farm, and herd animals. It’s almost impossible to imagine now, but hippos, crocodiles, and lush greenery dominated what is now a hostile desert.

Scientists have long believed that the people who lived here must have shared ancestry with Sub-Saharan Africans. But the AI generated newscast about these ancient mummies reveals something jaw-dropping: DNA from these Neolithic female herders shows no sign of Sub-Saharan genes. Instead, their genetic roots trace a unique North African lineage, diverging from Sub-Saharan Africans about the same time modern humans spread beyond Africa. Their closest relatives? Not neighboring tribes, but 15,000-year-old foragers from Taforalt Cave in distant Morocco.

What’s even wilder is their complicated relationship with Neanderthals. The Takarkori people have more Neanderthal DNA than Sub-Saharan Africans of their time, yet far less than the Taforalt foragers. The puzzle deepens with hints of ancient contact with Levantine farmers, but for the most part, these Saharan people lived in genetic isolation, in a world rich with wetlands, forests, and grasslands, but divided by harsh natural barriers.

This AI generated newscast about ancient mummies rewrites our understanding: farming probably spread across North Africa not through waves of migrating peoples, but by cultural diffusion—sharing ideas and techniques, not genes. The ancestors of Takarkori were hunter-gatherers who left behind beautifully crafted pottery and tools, settling for long stretches in one spot—a surprising twist in the saga of early human innovation.

Why did the Takarkori people remain isolated for so long? It turns out that the Green Sahara’s wildly diverse landscapes, from lakes to mountains, kept communities apart, allowing them to evolve separately, their stories hidden beneath the sand for millennia. And somewhere, still buried in the Sahara’s endless dunes, more ancient secrets—and perhaps even more mummies—may be waiting to change what we know about who we are.

So whenever you hear an AI generated newscast about ancient mummies, remember: the truth about our past is often stranger, and far more fascinating, than fiction.