Prof. Pierre Zalloua

Well, I write about Semitic languages in my book and something that fascinates me, and I learned so much about languages.

I'm not a linguist, of course, but languages move very differently than DNA.

The two are not tied together at all.

It'd be a mistake to think that we can associate language movement with DNA.

I'll give you an example.

Persia, when Persia dominated the entire region, including the Levant, you know what the lingua franca was?

Aramaic.

Yes.

So it was not Persian at all.

Languages move very differently than people.

And I think it's a very difficult thing to actually conflate the two together.

It's just going to be very difficult.

Yes.

Ancestors, it's a book about the Levant, mostly.

And it's a book that tells the story about who the ancestors of the Levant were.

And it's not only about ancestry or ancestors of the Levant.

It tells a story about cultures, the cultures that lived in the Levant and how these cultures manifested themselves, how we can look at DNA to just understand how these cultures moved

But most importantly, the message in this book is to basically state that DNA is only a thread about these cultures.

So it tells you how these cultures move, but it doesn't tell you anything about these cultures.

These cultures, we talk about languages, we talk about lifestyles, we talk about habits, rituals, and all of this.