A paleogenomic study led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has successfully sequenced the DNA of individuals from the Taforalt cave in Morocco, dating back 12,000 years. The research, published in Science, identifies a significant 'ghost lineage'—a previously unknown human population that contributed to the ancestry of North Africans before the arrival of Neolithic farmers from the Near East.
This Ghost Population appears to have been an isolated group that survived the Last Glacial Maximum in the refugia of the Maghreb. Their genetic signature provides the first clear evidence of a deep, indigenous North African lineage that evolved independently for millennia, offering new insights into the complex prehistory of human survival and adaptation in the Sahara-Sahel corridor.