Tristan Hughes

know few millennia and and and some of them still do today you know these caravans that we talk about that we we all learned about they were only recent um you also mentioned in passing earlier and i know it and its involvement in the story the story of the natufians yes now can you explain who they are and how they relate to the story of arabia by this time a few thousand years ago

Following 7,000 years ago, do you as a geneticist and your team, do you have more information available for learning more, as you mentioned there with the Natufian link, for instance, about the makeup of these early populations in Arabia?

I guess it's still the Stone Age at that time, or deep in prehistory, but less than 7,000 years ago?

But after that time, do we have more examples from the prehistoric Arabian population?

So 6,000, 5,000, 4,000 years ago, so we can learn much more about this?

So Pierre, of course, we're covering a huge geographic region with Arabia, you know, several modern countries today.

I mean, how do we think the whole region was ultimately populated?

What do we know about that?

The fertile crescent.

It's a very complex topic, and you've highlighted the wider region there, of course, and I'm guessing it also filters into Arabian populations as well?

I'm presuming then you've also looked at DNA from people who live in Arabia today.

Do you notice significant differences in the genetic, is it the ancestry, I guess, of people, let's say, from Yemen compared to Oman and so on?

Is that also an interesting component to look at?

And that's descended from those prehistoric migrations to Arabia thousands of years ago.

You could see them.

That's an amazing line then, right down to the present day.

Yeah.

Lots of this science sometimes goes over my head, but you've explained lots of it brilliantly in understanding the story of this early populating of such an important, crucial region of Southwest Asia.

Is there anything else you'd like to highlight that we really should talk about with these earliest populations in Arabia, and I guess, if you want, the wider region that we should think about when looking at ancient DNA and other fields today?

And then... Axum, a bit of Axum as well, Ethiopia in Yemen, yeah?