Ancestors: Identity and DNA in the Levant

An eye-opening investigation into ancestry and origins in the Middle East that synthesizes thousands of years of genetic history in the region to question what it means to be indigenous to any land

“Ancestors transcends geography to launch an eye-opening inquiry into the relationship of genetics and identity. It’s a transformational read for us all.”—Jason Roberts, author of Every Living Thing and A Sense of the World

In recent years, genetic testing has become easily available to consumers across the globe, making it relatively simple to find out where your ancestors came from. But what do these test results actually tell us about ourselves?

In Ancestors, Pierre Zalloua, a leading authority on population genetics, argues that these test results have led to a dangerous oversimplification of what one’s genetic heritage means. Genetic ancestry has become conflated with anthropological categories such as “origin,” “ethnicity,” and even “race” in spite of the complexities that underlie these concepts. And nowhere is this interplay more important and more controversial, Zalloua writes, than in the Levant—an ancient region known as one of the cradles of civilization and that now includes Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and parts of Turkey.

Born in Lebanon, Zalloua grew up surrounded by people for whom the question of identity was a matter of life or death. Building on years of research, he tells a rich and compelling history of the Levant through the framework of genetics that spans from one hundred thousand years ago, when humans first left Africa, to the twenty-first century and modern nation-states.

A timely, paradigm-shifting investigation into ancestry and origins in the Middle East, Ancestors ultimately reframes what it means to be indigenous to any land—urging us to reshape how we think about home, belonging, and where culture really comes from.