An archaeology breakthrough has been made after a previously unknown human lineage that lived in the "green Sahara" in Africa was discovered through two 7,000-year-old mummies.

DNA revealed the two mummified women were from never-before-seen isolated populations living during the African Humid Period, when the now-inhospitable Sahara was a humid and lush savanna. During that time between 14,500 to 5,000 years ago, humans hunted and eventually herded animals alongside lakes and rivers in sub-Saharan Africa. It has helped develop a new understanding of the isolated Takarkori people, finding they had some ancestry from the Levant, a stretch of land bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It also showed traces of Neanderthal ancestry which lived outside of Africa in Eurasia.