The First Arabians

What can ancient DNA tell us about the first homo sapiens to arrive in Arabia over 50,000 years ago? Tristan Hughes is joined by Prof. Pierre Zalloua to delve into the groundbreaking advances in ancient DNA research that illuminate the complex journeys of these early human populations. They discuss the challenges of extracting ancient DNA in harsh desert environments, the role of climate in human migration, and the archeological evidence of early human presence which show continuous population movements over millennia. MORE The Rise of Humans Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rise-of-humans/id1520403988?i=1000702067254 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/1vXxIXCruQh4w90EuawE6E The Kingdom of Kush Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kingdom-of-kush/id1520403988?i=1000685294025 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6QXTNyMH3Ov6UweDXEsf67 Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: @TheAncientsPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@TheAncientsPodcast Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:23Tristan Hughes?

  Arabia. At the dawn of human history, this vast and dramatic landscape became a gateway to the wider world. The story of the first Arabians begins with the earliest Homo sapiens to migrate out of Africa. Today is an especially exciting time, thanks to groundbreaking advances in ancient DNA research that are illuminating the complex and fascinating journey of our ancestors. In this episode, we'll explore how genetics can help us understand the connections between those first Homo sapiens who arrived in Arabia and modern-day populations. We'll also look at what life might have been like for those early human communities

• 2:06Tristan Hughes?

  living in Arabia more than 50,000 years ago. This is The Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the first Arabians. Our guest today is Dr. Pierre Zalloua, professor of genetics at Khalifa University.

• 2:29Tristan Hughes?

  Pierre, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast and to be doing it in person. Welcome.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Thank you. Actually, we've met three years ago.

• 2:36Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, we did.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, two years ago. Yeah, two years ago. And then, and then I'm happy that we finally made it.

• 2:40Tristan Hughes?

  We met at an archaeological conference in Saudi Arabia, of all places. And if it was fitting for today's topic on the first Arabians, but also the first Homo sapiens in the wider region as well, because you've just written a brand new book, Ancestors, all about the history of the Levant, or the Levant as well, with DNA and exploring the stories of these earliest people to these areas of the world. Is it a really exciting time with new scientific developments and so on?

• 3:06Speaker 03

  I think ancient DNA has transformed the way we look at population migrations and who populated which part of the world first. I think ancient DNA was, I would say, a, you know, caused a paradigm shift in the way we do population genetics. And, and no wonder that Papo Svante got the Nobel Prize for it. I mean, it's really, it's transformed the way we look at human migrations. And, and in a lot of places, actually, it made huge impact and it made major discoveries that made us change our ideas or our theories

• 3:48Speaker 03

  about when and how human migrated out of Africa. The challenge, I have to just put it here, is Arabia because of the heat and because of the conditions where the remnants of humans in the desert, actually extracting DNA from human remains has been extremely challenging.

• 4:11Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  And to date, I will tell you that that has not been A maybe apart from a couple of samples, no DNA beyond five thousand years have been able, we have not been able to get any DNA out of samples that are more than, you know, few thousand years old from Arabia, from the entire Arabia.

• 4:36Tristan Hughes?

  So is it?

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Which is a huge challenge.

• 4:38Tristan Hughes?

  It's a huge challenge. And is that in contrast to places a bit further north, like the Levant, where you have more human bones today?

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. So, so in the Levant and in northern Levant, in the Caucasus even, and in Iran, the Zagras Mountains, and, and in Anatolia, we've had ample, ample DNA samples. And that's why the story is so exciting up to the point where we get to Arabia. But we have other tools at our disposal that will, that have given us ideas about when Arabia was populated and how Arabia was populated, et cetera. So, but until we get ancient DNA, and I'm hoping we will, I mean, we're trying so hard. And actually, from that visit that you and I had, colleagues there, they're trying to actually get some good quality

• 5:29Speaker 03

  DNA out of the samples that they have. But still to date, we have not been able to get that.

• 5:35Tristan Hughes?

  You are a brilliant geneticist. I mean, can you explain us a bit more of the process behind how you would try to extract ancient DNA from these remains?

• 5:44Speaker 03

  So, um, ancient DNA, so every single cell of our body or the skeleton supposedly has DNA. But with time, cells get very porous. And then if there's no collagen to keep the bones together, you lose a lot of the skeleton of the cell itself, and DNA is no longer there. So you need some form of skeleton to fix the DNA to it. So we, we basically use certain parts of the skeleton, namely the, you know, the teeth and the molar, precisely because, you know, if you can actually drill within the molar part, you can actually extract DNA, and you hope that there is DNA inside.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  So that's one part that we can get DNA from. But most recently, and I say recently, over the last five years or so, we discovered that the petrous bone, which is, yes, which is, you know, below the ear, right at the end of the mandible. It's very thick. It's actually one of the thickest, if not the thickest bone in the body. Because it's thick, it actually can withstand a lot of heat and a lot of, you know, climatic changes, et cetera, and we can actually extract DNA from. And that's what most scientists have been successful with is extracting DNA from petrous bones. And actually, this was a major shift in the way we extract DNA. So basically, you grind that bone.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  And then when you grind that bone, you basically, you dissolve all the material into an aqueous phase and then liquid phase, and then you get the DNA out and you analyze the DNA.

• 7:23Tristan Hughes?

  And how can you then use that DNA to track prehistoric migrations of people that in some cases occur tens of thousands of years ago?

• 7:32Speaker 03

  Well, I think the beauty of ancient DNA is because you can archaeologically date, because you can carbon date and use other methods to actually date the, that material. So we know exactly using ancient DNA or ancient material is how old the material is. So that's something that we, we have now. For example, when you discover Neanderthal DNA, which is a very old DNA. So from other methods, you, you can actually date that skeleton or those remains, and you can actually put a date to it. And then when you extract the DNA, you now know that people who lived 100,000 years ago

• 8:15Speaker 03

  or 50,000 years ago, this is what their, what their DNA looked like. And you compare it to what the DNA looked like today. And then you can actually look, how, how much did it change in 50,000 years ago? Knowing that, knowing what we know from science is, yes, DNA changes every generation. But it's like a clock. We know exactly the changes that actually can happen through time. And by doing this comparison, we will be able to know if this change is actually a normal timeline change or if something else happened.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  To to these people, did they disappear? Or the people living today are the direct descendants of these skeletal remains?

• 8:59Tristan Hughes?

  Pierre, it is such a fascinating scientific field, and I must admit, I'm someone who doesn't have a big scientific background at all. So I'm loving learning more about this. If we go back to Arabia and you've highlighted how it's more tricky learning more about the earliest people populating Arabia because of the temperatures. I mean, if to learn more therefore about that, what other methods do you have to use alongside ancient DNA?

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Okay, so let's discuss first, why do people move? Okay, so why did, why did our ancestors leave Africa? Okay, well, they need better, you know, better place to live. Because either heat was too much or the hunting grounds were actually, you know, getting, they shrunk, et cetera. So it said, so they go from one environment to another because to to survive. So people move throughout history, they've been moving throughout history to seek better climate, better places to hunt, better places to live, et cetera. So why would actually people move into Arabia? And that's, that's the question that we, that we had.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  So I would say throughout the last, you know, hundred thousand years, the climate was the main driver for human migration. So you have to look at climate maps and see how did Arabia look like fifty thousand years ago? How did Arabia look like a hundred thousand years ago? How does Arabia look like today? And so it's extremely important for us to understand how the area looked, how the area behaved, you know? How was the environment in that area before we can actually say, well, human lived or didn't live? So this is a huge element that we need in place first.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  So looking at climate shifts, looking at was it wet? Did it actually, did it have enough green pastures for actually people to live, for animals to graze? And then, you know, you need. So when we talk to humans, you need, you know, subsidies for humans as well, right? I mean, you need the animals that they hunt, you need the plants that they eat, et cetera. So, so that's extremely important. So climatology or the science of, of, of environmental changes is extremely important. That's one aspect that we look at. So the second aspect is archaeology.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  You know, is there any archaeological remain that actually can tell us that humans did in fact live in that place? The problem with Arabia is that we see some evidence of human presence a hundred and thirty thousand years ago, maybe two hundred and ten thousand years ago. But then because of the climate, because of the shift in climate, then the area was no longer inhabited. So people actually escaped. And when they escape, either they move long distances, went back to Africa, or they went up north, or they live in refugia.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  And usually these refugia, from what we know today, have been around the Gulf area, so, so close to the water.

• 12:21Tristan Hughes?

  Okay, so like the Gulf of Aden or the Persian Gulf today?

• 12:23Speaker 03

  The Persian Gulf today, yes, exactly. So, so basically, we, we, we know that people move to these areas and they shrink. I mean, these areas, livable, livable areas, they shrink so much because of the climate. And of course, we have the, you know, uh, glacial ages, right? I mean, the last glacial, eh, last glaciation that happened twenty five thousand years ago to eighteen thousand years ago. This is the last glacial maximum that you talk about was also a, a major player and we'll talk about this. Because during that period.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Arabia was not a place where you can actually sustain life. So, so these fluctuations that happened, so if we talk about, let's go back to 130 to 110,000 years ago. And then for a long period of time, Arabia was not populated because people cannot live there. And then perhaps, you know, around, I would say 65,000 to 50,000, there has been a cooling area in there, more humid. And we have evidence that some people may have lived there. Okay. But then soon after that came the last glacial maximum. And then the entire population disappeared up until, I would say, 6,000 years ago.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  Where we call it the African humid period, which actually, you know, anywhere between 14 to 6,000 years. That's when Arabia was mostly populated. I would say around 7,000 prior to today. We see a, I would say, the largest number of people moved into Arabia based on the archaeological evidence that we have. So if we're gonna talk about when was Arabia populated?

• 14:09Speaker 03

  I would say, my guess would be around that time, 7,000 years ago, started to see strong evidence of populations that actually remained. One thing I have to mention as well is after the ice melted,

• 14:26Speaker 03

  around 18,000 years ago, what happened to the Persian Gulf? What happened to the, to the sea level? It rose significantly. So those people, the ancient people who actually may have lived around there, what happened to them? They're underwater now. So that's why it's very hard to find these archaeological remains from 50,000 years ago or, or or 20,000 years ago, if they exist because they're underwater. So hopefully one day, we can actually. Have underwater archaeology and then discover discover those. Some have now started to being discovered.

• 15:05Tristan Hughes?

  I know the evidence is more tentative, but I hope you don't mind if we go before seven thousand years ago. Right now with these earlier. I don't know if I want to say unsuccessful, but more temporary occupations of people in Arabia. So you mentioned, you know, that that evidence from one hundred and thirty, one hundred and twenty thousand years ago. So do we have these brief moments, which seems like there is human occupation in Arabia earlier on?

• 15:28Speaker 03

  These are based purely on certain archaeological findings. And no humans, actually, they have not been able to find human remains.

• 15:38Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  But the archaeology actually is telling that these may have been occupied. And the problem is, again, as I said, we have not been able to find human remains up until, you know, seven thousand or six thousand prior. And we are working, I am, you know, with some collaborators that, you know, we're working on some of these remains. So far, we're not very successful, but we are, we are pushing, pushing on that. So it's really hard to pinpoint the evidence right now of these ancient, ancient people who actually lived.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  I think as we do more archaeological studies, underwater archaeological studies, we will find a numerous sites across the Persian Gulf where we can actually see remnants of these ancient populations.

• 16:37Tristan Hughes?

  And is this also important to highlight because I know you also have done a lot of work on the Levant, where there's the the presence of Neanderthals and of early Homo sapiens together. Do we not think that Neanderthals made it into Arabia? Do we think that the Levant is almost the cutoff point?

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Uh, it's a very difficult question to answer because we don't have any, any DNA. But the most likely path is the Sinai up to the Levant, where Neanderthal lived for a very long time, moved into Europe, and we know there is strong evidence now that most likely they, the first interaction between.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  Or the first cross between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. It's interbreeding. The interbreeding happened in the Levant and perhaps happened more than once. So we know for a fact that they existed together at some point in the Levant. Now, how did the Neanderthal got there? Yes, I mean, you can argue that they may have also, you know, come through the Bab al Mandeb. You have to realize that through Bab al Mandeb in Yemen, they could cross it. You don't need to, I mean, the water was so shallow there, so people could cross. And the Sinai was very different back then. I mean, you know, you can actually cross it much easier than today. It was not all that desert like today.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  And again, as we learn more about how people moved, this one out of Africa migration is no longer sustainable. I think, you know. And, and one thing I have to also mention is we don't talk about migration. Back migration also played a huge role. People moved out of Africa, but a lot of people moved back into Africa. And so a lot of movement happened over the last 50,000 years. You know, during the last glacial maximum, people escaped the Levant, escaped Arabia, you know. And I wouldn't be surprised, actually, we have evidence to show that they actually moved back into East Africa and some other parts of Africa. The Natufians, which we'll talk about,

• 18:43Speaker 03

  we believe that after the Younger Dryas, which is a very cold period that happened around 11,000 years ago, the population of Natufians who lived in the Levant shrunk. And some of them may have actually escaped. Some of them went north, but others actually went south and perhaps crossed back into Africa to escape. Because we see material culture that in Natufian culture that is more impacted by Africa, whether because they interacted with them or whether they have actually moved there and interacted with them in Africa and they brought them back. So really, it's a, we have to think about, you know, it's not always one direction of movement. It's actually, you know, it's a corridor back and forth.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini.

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• 21:09Tristan Hughes?

  If we can focus quickly also on those out-of-Africa migrations. Pierre, I know you've done a lot of work around this as well. Can you tell us how they relate to those early groups of Homo sapiens going into Arabia? And then, as you mentioned, they ultimately, some of them, retreat back into Africa. But can you explain how DNA is making us rethink the nature of those migrations into Arabia at that time?

• 21:32Speaker 03

  So the reason the 50,000 years out-of-Africa migration has been highly documented because we have strong archaeology and we have also strong DNA to show we can time that migration. Through DNA mutations that happened. And the fact that, you know, now Homo sapiens, you know, initially, we thought, you know, when I first start to study population genetics, the whole idea was like, we are 150,000 years old. Of course, now, we pushed that to 400,000 years. We think some Homo sapiens actually are 400,000 years old now.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  And again, because of ancient DNA that made us change these theories. But the most striking idea is that the population in Africa shrunk so much during that time that those who actually migrated out of Africa were very few. And we're talking maybe in the thousands, maybe a few thousands only. And that's why we're not as genetically diverse as you would expect. If we were, if we were evolving without this bottleneck through 400,000 years ago, we would be a lot more diverse than we are today. 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.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  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, we know that, you know, if we say a generation is 25 years, so we expect certain changes based on DNA mutations, right? And then we can, 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.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  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.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  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, of, of time by generation and we, we can tell. 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?

• 24:44Speaker 03

  We know that the Natufians, who lived in the Levant 14,000 years ago, were actually the original or the, if we, in fact, 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. And then we also know that from the Zaros Mountains, you know, the, the foothill of, of the, of Iran's mountains. In Iran, yep, yep. They also came into the Levant. And that's how the Levant is actually populated.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  And I'll continue the story. So from that point on, because of climate, we understand how climate was. We understand also that, yes, the Levant at that point was sustainable for, for having people in. And then we have evidence now that these people migrated south into Arabia. So Arabia is actually heavily populated by ancient Levantine.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  Populations. So if you think about Arabia, modern Arabia was not populated from Africa. No, it was populated from the north. This is what ancient DNA is actually making us correct what we didn't know before. And then that's how we, that's how we do it.

• 26:11Tristan Hughes?

  The reason I ask also is that because I know, as you mentioned, no remains before seven thousand years ago. So it is much more tricky in Arabia. But I've got on my notes, things like the gate of tears and how with early successful migrations of humans out of Africa, that it seems likely that they went along the Arabian coast. And although it wasn't enduring there, because ultimately they have to leave Arabia when the climate gets much worse, as you mentioned, some twenty three thousand years ago. Because of that, I mean, do we therefore have any sense, any idea of how those early communities lived in Arabia? And how they got to Arabia, just anything about their lives?

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Yes. So when we talk about Bab al Mandeb or Gate of Tears is most likely Arabia, ancient Arabia, not the one that we know today, was populated most likely from the Gate of Tears, from Bab al Mandeb.

• 27:04Tristan Hughes?

  And as I said- Sorry, that, that is where, where is that?

• 27:06Speaker 03

  This is Yemen.

• 27:07Tristan Hughes?

  This is Yemen, right.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  It's just, yeah, it's just the, you know, it's across, so Eritrea, Ethiopia, and, you know, and, and you go-

• 27:14Tristan Hughes?

  Thank you.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  So basically, the most likely scenario is, it's ancient Arabia was populated through that route. But also other people tracked even more eastward and they, that's how they populated the, you know, East Asia, up to Australia.

• 27:30Tristan Hughes?

  Australia.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. But what we know of these ancient people who actually came to Arabia, not very much, because the climate changed so much in Arabia that I would say some of these early cultures, who were actually hunter gatherers, of course, they lived in very small communities and they lived close to the water. And then as the last glacial period happened, with the ice melting around eighteen thousand years ago, these communities actually either escaped or went underwater. That's why we still haven't discovered those people yet. I think, as I said earlier, we will get to know more about this when we do-

• 28:14Speaker 03

  You know, some underwater archaeology, and I think we're gonna get there soon. So after that, Arabia was dry for a long time, up until, as I said, the last, we call it the African human period. It started to happen around fourteen thousand years ago, and then it peaked around eight to seven thousand years ago in Arabia. And then that's when Arabia was populated again.

• 28:40Tristan Hughes?

  And do we see, and so the people are coming at that time, they're coming from, from many different places, including the Levant, do we think?

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Well, this is what I think, and I could be wrong, but this is what so far the DNA that I've worked with have, have told us is, yes, most of modern Arabians that we see today have a huge DNA component from the Levant and that, and that region. Of course, you also have the Iranian component as well present, you have the Natufian present as well. And, and importantly, you have two other components into modern Arabia. One from East Africa, you see it. You see another one from Egypt.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  There's a lot of common lineages between Egypt and Arabia. And you see from the east through Dilmun, the Bahrain interaction with the east, you know, with the Indian trade and all of this. So, but these last three are more recent, so Egypt, East Africa and India were much more recent. Whereas the Levant input was much older than this to Arabia. So if I wanna say, you know, the population of Arabia today, I would say, yes, Levantine, mostly Egypt, East Africa and, and some part of, of India.

• 30:10Tristan Hughes?

  Thank you for letting me ask so many questions about the pre seven thousand years ago. I do appreciate it, but I love exploring that kind of the deep Ice Age story of it all. But does it therefore seem that by eight thousand, seven thousand years ago, there is quite a, a population boom in Arabia at that time?

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Around seven thousand years ago, we, we believe there was a population boom, and that's what we see today. I mean, these are the people who actually survived over the last. Um. Seven thousand years, although although um if you look at Arabia today um and compare it to seven thousand years ago, of course, it was a much different place. I mean, it was you had much greener places in Arabia than what you see today.

• 30:48Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, what do we know about the environment at that time?

• 30:52Speaker 03

  You know, there's still, you know, uh, small communities, as as I said, so you don't see very large communities and and mostly around places where you have water. Of course, there were a lot of lakes present, so so they were more nomadic and actually they kept the name. You know, we believe the name Arabia, which is, you know, it's it's also a a a term that, you know, needs to be studied extensively. It's, you know, it's to describe nomadic people who lived in Arabia. So I think that's how these people lived. They moved around these lakes, around places where there is water, and and the remnants of those are these oasis that you still have today in Arabia.

• 31:31Tristan Hughes?

  So I was actually going to ask my next question was, when do we think that the people who then populate Arabia, of course, massive landmass, I mean, when do they become more sedentary? I mean, do they bring farming with them? But it doesn't seem like it's a straightforward answer that.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Yes, uh, it's not a straightforward answer. Oh, no, absolutely not. I I think I I think the nomadic uh lifestyle of Arabia has dominated uh most of the last three, four millennia. Um, you know, they they moved from one place to another. You know, after six thousand years, actually, Arabia started to to become more arid and more more desert up until today. So, yes, people, their movement were a bit difficult. Uh, they moved with difficulty because of sustainable land actually shrunk, and I think they lived nomadic life for the last. You know, few millennia and and and some of them still do today.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  You know, these caravans that we talk about, that we we all learned about, they were only recent.

• 32:38Tristan Hughes?

  You also mentioned in passing earlier, and I know it, and its involvement in the story, the story of the Natufians.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:44Tristan Hughes?

  Now, can you explain who they are?

• 32:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:46Tristan Hughes?

  And how they relate to the story of Arabia by this time a few thousand years ago?

• 32:51Speaker 03

  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 twelve and fourteen thousand 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.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  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, modern day Syria, Lebanon and and Jordan. And then after the Younger Dryas happened, you know, eleven thousand years where you have this major climate shift. They split, we believe that they split.

• 34:10Speaker 03

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

• 34:17Speaker 03

  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, and they started mixing. So we see evidence of mixing between the Natufians and the Neolithic Anatolians and the people coming from Iran, from the Zagros Mountains.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  And that's what constituted the Levant today, that we know it today. And then part of the southern Natufians that actually escaped, we believe that actually led to most of the inhabitants of Arabia. So we think that, yes. So, but they also mixed from the northern Levantine as well. So, and this is still up in the air. It's not 100% solid, but this is what the early evidence is showing us.

• 35:29Tristan Hughes?

  And so 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 like 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 it's deep in prehistory, but less than 7,000 years ago?

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Yes. So again, Arabia, prior to 7,000 years ago, very, very limited evidence, archaeological or other, that exists in Arabia. The Levant, of course, we had a lot more. I think the Levant, we see continuous populations over the last 7,000 years, and perhaps more. Of course, the Levant, because of the climate and because of the topography of the Levant and Anatolia, a lot more refuge were there. And people actually could escape and stay in these refuge when the weather was bad, unlike Arabia,

• 36:31Speaker 03

  where you could not find serious refuge to go. And as I said, you know, because after 7,000 or 6,000 years ago, the land became... More arid and more desert-y like.

• 36:45Tristan Hughes?

  No, but do we have, like, 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 them?

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Yes. So, so, well, I would say, let's talk maybe 5,000.

• 37:02Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  5,000 and 4,000 years ago. And this is where we start seeing the evidence right now. Arabia has not been studied extensively archaeologically. It's now been, you know, I would say over the last maybe five to seven years where a lot of activities have been going on. And Al Ula as a site. But it's much later than this, Al Ula. We're talking the Nabataean. And this is much recent. So we know more about this. And frankly, what I know about this is much more recent than the 7,000. So I couldn't tell much about, you know, prior to these people who actually lived in Arabia. We still don't know.

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• 39:29Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Yes, I think one of the most important thing to note here is we believe a lot of things happened in that region. Really, the first communities that existed were, you know, in the Euphrates, in Mesopotamia, right? And I mean, we're not too far.

• 39:58Tristan Hughes?

  The fertile crescent.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Yes, the fertile crescent, exactly. So, so the first communities, the first cities, you know, the first real populations, as we call them, populations actually started there. So this region has been continuously populated over the last 7,000 years, which makes it a fascinating region. So when you approach and you want to study this region, you have to look at this massive shifts of populations and cultures. And you say, you know, how am I going to decipher, you know, all of this by looking at modern DNA today? And it's really, it's a puzzle, it's a huge puzzle. So if we think about it, so if we go back 7,000 years ago,

• 40:44Speaker 03

  or a bit earlier, during the Neolithic time, and the agricultural expansion, let's put it this way.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  So let's talk, let's talk eight to nine thousand years when actually people started to leave their hunter-gatherer styles into small communities and agricultural and expansions and start farming. So this happened in the Fertile Crescent, this happened in Mesopotamia. And who were the cultures that actually lived there back then? So there were very few of them. And as I said earlier, these actually were the people who lived in the Zagros Mountains, at the foot of the Zagros, these people who lived in Anatolia and the Natufians. So this is how it all started. So these are the people who actually were the ancestors of the Sumerians, Sumer,

• 41:37Speaker 03

  the first city in the world, right? As we call it, you know, 3100 years ago, 100 B.C. So these are the original cultures that actually led to the people who live today. I mean, all of us. So you have Sumer that started around 3100. And then after Sumer, then came the Akkadians. And the Akkadians came somewhere from, you know, northern Euphrates, perhaps more from, you know, West Asia, perhaps the Levant. They were Semitic people, the Akkadians were Semitic people.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  And they came and they took over and they destroyed, well, they dominated the Sumer. And then after that, you know, you had so many different cultures that actually fought. You had the Babylonians, right? You had the Assyrians. And so all of these people actually that moved in that region make our work extremely difficult to understand. But at the end of the day, when you do the analysis, you see that all of these actually came from these three distinct original cultures, which I think fascinating. If I continue, if I continue through that, so if we go from, you know...

• 42:59Speaker 03

  What happened to the Babylonians, then you know, you have the Assyrians and the Neo-Assyrians that they actually came and they took over. Neo-Assyrians actually took over the entire region up until North Egypt. So they had a major presence. So when all these cultures actually dominate, you still, you say, you know, what am I doing now? Five thousand years later, what am I doing? How can I actually decipher all of this? So it's not, it's not an easy task. So when I, when I did my work on, and I say, identity and the Levant, identity and the NA and the Levant, it's just, I'm trying to figure out, you know,

• 43:41Speaker 03

  you know, who are these people, you know, and, and when did they, when did they arrive? And where did they come from? So it's really fascinating when you start putting archaeology, history and genetics together to understand our ancestry. And that's what's fascinating about all of this. So you have to think and you have to put in perspective, you know, that, you know, it's not, it's not always a linear, a linear approach. It's very, you know, complex, interactive approach. And, and you have to come, you know, come to the idea that it's not going to be an easy answer. It's not going to be a simple, linear answer.

• 44:23Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  That's right. I mean, you know, part of, if we, if we look at Mesopotamia, right? And if you look at Iran, I mean, if you, if you go, if you go south, right? I mean, that's where you, you are. You have Yemen and you have Arabia, right? I mean, this, this interaction, it's a continuum. We, we don't know if actually people moved from Arabia into Iran or from Iran into Arabia. And I think we're seeing both. We're seeing this interaction ancient up until today. And when we talk ancient, we're talking 7,000 years.

• 45:04Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Yes. So when you do, when you do DNA analysis on modern people who live in Arabia or in any region, there's something you have to, you have to really understand is that culture actually makes an impact on how our DNA is. In other words, so what you choose to do in your life, where you migrate, where you move, who you marry, makes your DNA different. So if you, if you migrate into an area where nobody lived before as a small group and you grow, your DNA is gonna look very different than the initial, initial group because actually,

• 46:06Speaker 03

  you know, you're actually breeding within a very small group. 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, you know, 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 gonna find differences because there is a geographical barrier, you know, these people have been living together for

• 46:46Speaker 03

  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, 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, remains the same.

• 47:07Tristan Hughes?

  So, and that's descended from those prehistoric migrations to Arabia thousands of years ago.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  You could see them.

• 47:11Tristan Hughes?

  That's an amazing, that's an amazing line then, right down to the present day. Lots of this science sometimes goes over my head, but you've explained lots of it brilliantly in understanding the kind of story of this early populating of this 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 that we should think about when looking at ancient DNA and other fields today?

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Well, I, I, I think it's important to understand that people moved a lot. And it's also important to understand that there's not going to be a single story about human populations. I think there is going to 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.

• 48:19Speaker 03

  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. So, and we know that there's a mix between Denisovan, Neanderthal and Homo sapiens as well. So what I'm trying to say is, we're learning. I don't think anything, you know, we should not simplify the story. I think simplifying the story,

• 49:05Speaker 03

  you know, yes, we'd like to, to say we came, we descended from X population at that particular time, but it's not always as simple. I think the complexity of it makes it more interesting, especially for people like me. And as I, as I give examples, there are multiple, multiple populations that or cultures that lived in a very small region. Which is, you know, the fertile crescents all the way down to the Levant. But then, if we go back ten, twelve thousand years ago, we know that the source of these populations were only three, three cultures. So, so these are fascinating stories. I'll give you an example.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  The Levant today was populated, yes, you have all of these invaders that we talk about, like the Romans, the Persians came, and then, and then the Romans, and then.

• 49:59Tristan Hughes?

  A bit of Aksim as well, Ethiopia in Yemen.

• 50:03Speaker 03

  I mean, I mean, I'm talking about the Levant.

• 50:05Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, sorry, okay.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  So in the Levant, you have, you have the Romans and then, and then, you know, and then the Persians, of course. So you have all of these mix that happened in the Levant, okay? And then you would expect to see a lot of these DNA remains of, of Romans and Persians and the Crusades later, but you don't. You see only very small fraction that actually is, is actually changing only, which is fascinating, which is fascinating. These tell stories that actually make us say, you know, yes, people come, you know, especially in the past, you know, these, these waves of people moving through wars,

• 50:48Speaker 03

  you know, Alexander with his army, and they didn't leave any DNA or very, very little DNA to, to, to mention.

• 50:56Tristan Hughes?

  But it's so interesting going back to those three groups that you highlighted earlier that they stem from. So I guess that's also in the case with like the famous Arabian kingdoms like the Nabataeans or the Subayans in Yemen, you know, they also have their, their links to those, those three from earlier.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right, that's right.

• 51:13Tristan Hughes?

  My last question must also be Semitic languages.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:17Tristan Hughes?

  Can ancient DNA and your studies help us learn about the spread of Semitic languages into the Arabian Peninsula?

• 51:24Speaker 03

  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, to think that we can associate language, 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?

• 51:56Tristan Hughes?

  Aramaic.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  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 gonna be very difficult.

• 52:10Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, this has been such a deep dive into ancient genetics and its links to the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Levant, the fertile crescent. Talk to us a little bit about your new book, Ancestors.

• 52:22Speaker 03

  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.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  So it tells you how these cultures moved, 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. And I think that's what this book talks about. It talks about that we should not limit a culture to a DNA test, should not limit identities to a DNA test. I always say that roots is not a word to be used for humans, maybe certain plants. But origin is something that you carry with you as a human being.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  And then your identity is something that you modulate and you evolve. So DNA does not, or should not have the impact that initially we thought it will have on identities and cultures. So that's what I talk about in the book.

• 54:02Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, it's a great book. As I said, you cover all of that area and the long history and prehistory of those areas. And it's the makeup of the of the populations. It just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

• 54:15Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 54:19Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr Pierre Zalua talking all things the first Arabians. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating, well, we'd really appreciate that. Now, don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with the new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalised AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.