Prof. Pierre Zalloua

So this is what DNA is telling us.

So DNA tells us these stories that we shrunk and then we expanded again when we left Africa.

So, and then from that point on, when you study people today, you compare their DNA and you can actually tell how many generations passed

through mutations that we calculate.

So we know that if we say a generation is 25 years, so we expect certain changes based on DNA mutations, right?

And then we can calculate and figure out when a mutation appeared.

So we start actually understanding when people moved, how they moved, and who moved to certain places and who established

those places.

And once we start looking at populations living today, we start actually constructing reverse engineering.

We actually start to say, oh, this group who lives in the Levant today, we know where they come from because we have ancient DNA.

from people in situ, in specific places, we can compare this ancient DNA to modern DNA and say, is this a likely descendant?

And that's how we do it.

So we compare ancient DNA to modern DNA and we do the calculation of time by generation and we can tell.

So for example, in the Levant, we know that the Levant, the modern day Levant,

is made of mostly three or at the most four major genetic components.

In other words, who are the ancestral populations of the Levant?

We know that the Natufians

who lived in the Levant 14,000 years ago, were actually the original or the, if we can find, the first inhabitants of the Levant that are continuously, their DNA is continuously present until today.

And then these people were mixed from the Neolithic Anatolian, talking 12,000 years, 12 to 8,000 years.

who came from Anatolia.