Prof. Pierre Zalloua

So culture actually, in that sense, changes the way the DNA is going to look like.

And this is something that we don't often think about.

So when you tell me that if you take the genes or the genomes or the genetic makeup of people who lived in Yemen versus people who lived in Jeddah, for example, Saudi Arabia, yes, you're going to find differences because there is a geographical barrier.

These people have been living together for a long time.

But if you take it a step further or if you take it a step

Deeper than this, no, the changes are not very different.

So yes, you could see some changes that are modern changes, that are new changes that you can actually describe, but the stock remains the same.

Well, I think it's important to understand that

people moved a lot.

And it's also important to understand that there's not gonna be a single story about human populations.

I think there's gonna be many, many stories, and these stories, I would say, will change because science will change.

What we understand today is

is based on what we've learned, but then maybe 10 years from now, new evidence comes and then it will change the way we understood things.

We keep on changing many things.

As I said earlier, you know, we thought Homo sapiens were only 150,000 years old.

Now we think they are 400,000 years ago.

So initially when I was studying genetics,

My professor told us that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens never mixed because they based all of this on mitochondrial DNA.

Now we know that they mixed at least four times.

We know now there is Denisovans as well in the East.