What do we inherit when we inherit identity? In Ancestors, geneticist Pierre Zalloua ventures into the tangled roots of the Levant to answer this question — not with certainty, but with curiosity and care. Both rigorous and tender, this book is a rare offering: a scientific inquiry that refuses simplicity, a cultural meditation grounded in genetic data, and a love letter to a region too often flattened by war, empire, and myth.

Zalloua begins by dismantling race — not just as a construct, but as a colonial invention. Through his accessible crash course on DNA and human evolution, he traces our shared origins, migration out of Africa, and the genetic mingling of Homo sapiens with Neanderthals and Denisovans, locating some of these first encounters right in the Levant. From there, he walks readers through thousands of years of movement, separation, and cultural formation — documenting how geography, climate, and war shaped the genetic fabric of the region.

But what makes Ancestors remarkable isn’t just the science — it’s Zalloua’s refusal to let genes define identity. Again and again, he reminds us that culture, language, and belonging are fluid. That indigeneity cannot be mapped with a microscope. That the Levant is not a battleground between East and West, but a convergence — a cradle of alphabets, gods, migrations, and meaning.

There are moments when the prose sags under the weight of data, especially in the final chapters, but even then, the heart of the book pulses strong. Zalloua’s critique of the Arab League’s cultural erasures, his deconstruction of “Semitic” identity, and his efforts to uncover the vanished Phoenicians are all grounded in a politics of preservation — not as nostalgia, but as resistance.

If you’re a reader drawn to science with soul, histories that resist binaries, or a reimagining of identity beyond the nation-state, Ancestors is well worth your time. It doesn’t just map genes — it maps the ever-unfinished story of human belonging.

📖 Read this if you love: cultural histories that resist borders, anti-essentialist takes on identity, and accessible science writing with heart.

🔑 Key Themes: Genetics and Identity, Indigeneity and Migration, Cultural Hybridity and Belonging, Anti-Racism and Colonial Critique, Ancestry and Epistemic Humility.