Currently a harsh, arid sandscape, it's hard to believe the Sahara was once studded with sparkling water bodies that nourished lush green savannas.
But the remains of human pastoralists and their livestock have been found in the region's rock shelters. A new genetic analysis suggests the humans who called this 7,000-year-old version of the Sahara home largely kept to themselves, genetically speaking. Max Planck Institute evolutionary anthropologist Nada Salem and colleagues sequenced the ancient DNA of two female individuals buried at the Takarkori rock shelter in what's now southwestern Libya. The 7,000-year-old Takarkori women shared the most genes with 15,000-year-old foragers from Morocco, suggesting a long-standing, stable human population existed in North Africa before and during the Saharan humid period. "Evidence from ancient lake deposits, pollen samples, and archaeological artifacts confirm human presence, hunting, herding, and resource gathering in the currently arid…