Not All of Us Came From the Forest
(Kurds, Iranians, Natufians — and the puzzle of Iberomaurusians)
They say “hunter-gatherer”
like it explains everything—
as if we all crawled out of forests,
chasing deer,
living on berries and bone.
But my ancestors?
They didn’t hunt for stories.
They planted them.
They carved gods into stone
before your tribes had names.
They weren’t chasing herds.
They were building homes.
They stood at Çayönü,
and whispered to the soil.
They built temples that predate
your maps, your myths,
your tired timelines.
We carry no trace
of the Mesolithic ghost
you insist belongs to everyone.
Our roots were Natufian—
yes, Levantine,
sedentary before you learned the word.
Perhaps touched by Arabia,
but already sowing the seeds
of what would become Kurd.
And what of the Iranians?
Don’t paint them flat.
They are not your wild men.
They are a marriage
of Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers
and Anatolian farmers,
of mountain shadow
and grain-fed light.
And the Iberomaurusians?
Perhaps a distant hum
in the background of the Natufian breath,
a ghost woven subtly
into the edge of the weave.
Not central—
but perhaps part
of this intricate, unbroken puzzle.
A faint note in the ancient music—
heard, but not leading.
You want to tell the story
from the cave,
but our fire didn’t start there.
It started in the field,
in the temple,
in the hand that chose to stay.
So no—
not all of us came from the forest.
Some of us
came from the stars,
and from the stillness
of stone.