Natufian 23andme format genomes

The Natufians were a Mesolithic culture that thrived in the Levant, covering modern-day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. They are considered a crucial transitional society between mobile hunter-gatherers and the first agricultural civilizations.

Unlike their fully nomadic predecessors, Natufians lived in semi-permanent settlements, making them one of the first cultures to show a shift toward village life. Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and Natufians first populated it.

They developed advanced microlithic tools, including sickles used for harvesting wild grains and grinding stones for food processing—precursors to full-scale agriculture. Burials included ornamental beads and carved objects, showing evidence of ritual practices and social differentiation.

The Natufians are among the earliest known cultures to have lived alongside domesticated dogs, marking an important step in human-animal relationships, as evidenced by mixed burials of humans and dogs.

Though not fully agricultural, their intensive foraging of wild cereals like wheat and barley began altering the Middle Eastern ecosystem, encouraging plant domestication and reducing biodiversity in some areas.

The Natufians are often linked to the ancestors of later Semitic-speaking peoples, particularly through their genetic contribution to Neolithic populations in the Levant, Egypt, and Arabia.

The natufians can be modeled as a mixture of Dzudzuana hunter gatherer with the Iberomaurusians, which means they were clearly a Eurasian, and not an African people group.

For this video, I gathered the raw DNA of 2 natufians, both being male and both carrying the Y lineage E1b. I ran them through my Trait Predictor tool for DNA analysis.