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Researchers analyzed the ancient DNA of two mummies from what is now Libya to learn about people who lived in the "Green Sahara" 7,000 years ago. Naturally mummified human remains found in the Takarkori rock shelter in the Sahara desert point to a previously unknown human population. (Image credit: © Archaeological Mission in the Sahara, Sapienza University of Rome) Two 7,000-year-old mummies belong to a previously unknown human lineage that remained isolated in North Africa for thousands of years, a new study finds. The mummies are the remains of women who once lived in the "Green Sahara," also known as...

The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy objects, according to a new study. Physicists at the University of Amsterdam investigated the forces needed to pull weighty objects on a giant sled over desert sand, and discovered that dampening the sand in front of the primitive device reduces friction on the sled, making it easier to operate. The findings help answer one of the most enduring historical mysteries: how the Egyptians were able to accomplish...

The team has been investigating findings from an ancient rock shelter at a site named Takarkori in south-western Libya. It is desert now, but earlier in the Holocene age [our present age], some 10,000 years ago, it was part of the "green Sahara" and wild cereals grew there. More than 200,000 seeds - in small circular concentrations - were discovered at Takarkori, which showed that hunter-gatherers developed an early form of agriculture by harvesting and storing crops. But an alternative possibility was that ants, which are capable of moving seeds, had been responsible for the concentrations...The site has yielded other...