Prof. Pierre Zalloua

And I think they lived nomadic life for the last,

So the Natufians, the name of Natufians comes from the valley of Natuf, Wadi Natuf, which is in Jordan.

This is where actually the late period Natufian were.

So the Natufians are the earliest cultures that we know of in the Levant.

anywhere between 12 and 14,000 years ago.

And they lived, we can start seeing, I mean, they lived in many caves, of course, and maybe some early, early community life of the Natufians.

The difficulty that we have with the Natufians today is we don't have too many samples to look for.

I mean, most of what we know comes from half a dozen samples that have actually been sampled successfully, but

And most data comes from David Reich, who is a very famous ancient DNA specialist as well.

So these are the people who lived in the Levant.

They occupied parts of Syria, modern-day Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

And then after the Younger Dryas happened, you know, 11,000 years where you have this major climate shift, they split.

We believe that they split.

Some went south, further south, and perhaps they reached Africa, and some went further north.

But they shrunk in size because of the climate.

They shrunk so much.

And then after, when the climate changed again, then they spread again.

And while they were spreading,

At the same time, people were coming down from the Caucasus, from the Anatolian plains, and from the Zagros.

So as people expanded, because the climate got better after the last glacial maximum,