Ancestors: Identity and DNA in the Levant

From a leading authority on population genetics, a deep dive into ancestry and origins in the Middle East that interrogates culture, identity, migration, and ethnicity to reframe what it means to be indigenous to any land.

In recent years, as companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com have made genetic testing available across the globe, it has become relatively simple to find out where your ancestors came from.

But acclaimed geneticist Pierre Zalloua believes that these test results have led to a dangerous oversimplification of what one's genetic heritage means. People have conflated genetic ancestry with other ways of defining themselves such as "origin," "ethnicity," and even "race" but give no attention to the complexities that underlie these concepts.

Nowhere is this interplay more important, and more controversial, than in the Levant--an ancient region known as one of the cradles of civilization, and which now includes modern-day Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and parts of Turkey. Born in Lebanon, Zalloua grew up surrounded by people for whom this question of identity was one of life or death importance. In Ancestors, Zalloua uses the Levant to grapple with what being indigenous really means. He finds that DNA does not determine a culture or an ethnicity, but instead, one must look to their own history to understand their identity.

Building on years of research, Zalloua tells a history of the Levant through the framework of genetics that spans from 100,000 years ago, when humans first left Africa, to the 21st century and modern nation-states. World-shifting and accessible, Ancestors will reshape the way you think about where our culture really comes from.

Author: Pierre Zalloua
Publisher: Random House
Published: 04/29/2025
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 7.50h x 5.00w x 0.72d
ISBN: 9780593730904

About the Author
Pierre Zalloua is a population geneticist focusing primarily on the Eastern Mediterranean. He has a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California at Davis. He has held academic positions at Harvard University, Khalifa University, The American University of Beirut, and The Lebanese American University. He has authored and co-authored more than 180 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He is featured in Quest for the Phoenicians, a documentary film about his work produced by National Geographic.