The Land of Canaan
Our planet. Earth is a beautiful and complex collage of wildly varying terrain types, including, but not limited to river valleys, forests, jungles, deserts and mountains. These lands also contain a wide variety of resources. Our human ancestors made use of these resources to build civilization. Small settlements grew into villages, towns and cities. City-states expanded into kingdoms and empires as well as to build and create Humanity's energy and resources that have been used to take and destroy. Since the beginning of written history humans which are often selfish and greedy, have used force to exploit the labour of another man's hands and take his stuff. The earliest war in history we have a record of took place between L. and the Sumerian king of Kish who boasted that he carried away the spoils and weapons of Ilham undoubtedly. There were many wars before this that we do not have records of and many many more that have been fought since.
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| Photo by Jenna Richardson from Pexels |
Of all the pieces of land on earth. One of the most contested and fought over has been the Levant, roughly speaking. The levant is the land around the eastern Mediterranean coast The southern portion of the Levant has commonly been called the Land of Canaan. For thousands of years, a constant cavalcade of imperial armies have marched through and dominated this region. Canaan is not one of the most resource-rich regions on the planet, but it is one of the most strategically important, especially for many of history's most ambitious empire builders Kanaan was not only strategically important for the movement of armies. The region was also at the vital crossroads of all the major land routes for trade between Egypt and the greater near east. Whoever controlled Canaan could regulate and tax the significant amount of trade that flowed through. However, controlling Canaan was never an easy task for the relatively small size of its land area.
Culture
There is an extreme topographical variation throughout the region. Different microclimates terrain and drastic elevation changes naturally divide Canaan into many micro-regions. To oversimplify most of Canaan can be divided into four broad categories One, the coastal plain to the hill country, three, the Jordan rift river valley for the Trans Jordanian plateau. If you looked at a cross-section of the land it would look something like this because science reasons the vast majority of the region's significant rainfall falls to the west of the Jordan rift, and the land within the rift receives very little rainfall Consequently, much of the best farmland has been located on the coastal plain because the coastal plain and hill country was largely dependent on seasonal rainfall they were susceptible to periodic drought and famine to survive. This made it necessary for the people of Canaan to store away sufficient food and water for a rainy day or more accurately, many non-rainy days If enough food and water were not stored.
Archaeology
The only two options left for the ill-prepared were conflict or migration. The natural division the terrain encouraged was pronounced in bad times and every man, tribe, town and city for itself. The mentality that developed then carried over to the good times. Although their languages religion and culture were all quite similar. More often than not, The Canaanites were very divided. The Canaanites were the indigenous inhabitants of the region, primarily descended from those that lived in Canaan during prehistoric times. In addition to fighting among themselves, the alternative option which was to leave was also common in bad times. Two of the early cradles of human civilization Mesopotamia and Egypt were the primary destinations for Canaanite refugees. The flat, open river valleys of these regions offered plenty of fresh water and food but little in the way of natural defence. In contrast, the hill country of Canaan had significant defensive advantages.
The hill country's greatest weakness was possibly its greatest strength. The geographical division and elevation changes that made the land difficult to unite also made it difficult to conquer. Defensive locations in the hill country that also had access to water from springs, rivers, streams and rainwater collected in cisterns were often preferred as locations to build cities compared to other locations with better farmland and little or no natural defence cities like blackish, Jerusalem, Samaria and Hebron where all power centres were chosen a further strategic location that made them difficult to besiege. In the north, the hill country in the coastal plain merges the Canaanites of that heavily forested region became experts see fares and merchants and their high-quality wood was and I demand throughout the ancient Mediterranean, these Canaanites were later known as the Phoenicians. While the hill country of Canaan is not particularly unusual. The Jordan rift is one of the most extreme topographic features on our planet.
The shore of the Dead Sea is the lowest point of land on earth, while the Dead Sea itself and the sea of galileo are the two lowest lakes in the world. The north and south of the rift are also drastically different from each other. The lower south is very dry and the Dead Sea is six times saltier than the ocean, so the utility is pretty limited. In contrast, the north is wetter and the water is fresh. There's a marshland, ample wildlife and farmland for approximately 1000 years. The city of Jesus, or was the leading city-state of the northern rift, the kings of Jesus, or were powerful enough to periodically command a coalition of northern Canaanite city-states. While there were many prosperous city-states in the northern rift in the south, Jericho was the only notable city-state This is largely because Jericho has access to a significant amount of freshwater, a very rare commodity in the surrounding area on the Trans Jordan plateau.
Two civilizations, the ammonites and the mobile it's developed. They both became centralized kingdoms In the later 2nd Millennium BC. They were centred around modest river valleys which were fed by underground springs that flowed into the Jordan River. The north of the Transjordan region was dominated by the Amer Rights and later the Armenians, both coming from around what is now the Syrian islands. The economy of Ammon and Moab was largely dependent on the outermost inland trade route that connected the near east to Egypt that trade route passed through it Like the other Canaanites ammonites and mo bites. The estimates were semantic speaking people. They possessed some of the least hospitable lands in the region because quality farmland was in short supply. The estimates were predominantly semi-nomadic pastoralists. Consequently, whenever they could not make a living off of taxing trade, they often turn to banditry rating as far north as the Jezreel Valley and to the west to the borders of Egypt.
As early as the first dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs. The strategic importance of Canaan was realized at the site which would later become Gaza. The Egyptians built a fortress that guarded Egypt's economic and military interests in the region. After a few 100 years, that site was retaken by the coastal Canaanites during the early Bronze Age, several fortified Canaanite towns grew into cities. The largest known sites of this period were Anisur, meg Itoh and Jericho. The last centuries of the Early Bronze Age were marked by the depopulation and abandonment of the larger urban sites in Canaan smaller farming villages and a semi-nomadic way of life became more prevalent For a time in the middle Bronze Age, urbanism returned and increased. It was during this period that hazel rose to become the leading city-state in northern Canaan. While Ashdod and Ashkelon became the leading cities of the coastal plain and blackish, Jerusalem and Hebron became the leading cities of the hill country.
As the land prospered and the trade flowing through the region increased imperial powers began to increase military pressure on Canaan Sen was right. The third is the first known Egyptian pharaoh to campaign in Canaan. There, he Vasilis kings and extracted tribute and plunder. While Egypt put pressure on the south, the emirate kingdom of Qana put pressure on the north. They extracted tribute and hazel became a nominal vassal of Qana. Perhaps because of this military pressure, many Canaanites migrated into the Nile delta. The Egyptians called the wave of migrants who are predominantly or entirely comprised of Canaanites, the Hyksos. Around 1650, BC, the Hyksos overthrew the Egyptians and ruled as Pharaohs in the Nile Delta for a century before being defeated and driven out by the Egyptians. A somewhat traumatized Egypt became heavily militarized and their number one policy goal was to control Canaan and prevent hicks is like an event from ever happening again.
From the onset of the Egyptian new kingdom pharaohs repeatedly campaigned throughout the Levant. They brought the entire region under their control, making the Canaanite city-states their vassals during the reign of topmost authored many city-states in the love entre belt and at the battle of mosquito at most, the third defeated a formidable coalition of Canaanite kings. The Battle of Megiddo is the earliest in history. We have a written account of the date, tactics, casualties and plunder were all recorded, including his campaign at My Ghetto It took almost a third, 14, nearly yearly campaigns to put down all the rebellions in the Levant. The city of Megiddo controlled the entry and exit point to and from the Jezreel Valley. The Jezreel Valley, which is shaped like an arrowhead, sits at the intersection of all the major land routes that connect the Canaanite coastal plain with the rest of the near east.
Consequently, the site has been the venue for many battles throughout history. Ancient kings, emperors, medieval crusaders Arabs and Mongols have all fought and fell on the valley of Jezreel, napoleon and salad in one battle there And as recent as 1918, more than 90,000 troops of the British and Ottoman empires crashed in the Jezreel Valley near my ghetto. The battle lasted six days and ended with a British victory. According to the biblical account, Israel's first king Saul was slain in battle at the edge of the Jezreel Valley while fighting the Philistines. According to the biblical Book of Revelation, the last battle will be fought on the Jezreel valley near my ghetto. A transliteration of the word mosquito is Armageddon. On a slightly lighter note than the end of the world. The ancient Egyptians also realized the strategic importance of the Jezreel Valley. So they built a fortress, military and administrative centre at the junction of the Jezreel Valley and the Jordan rift.
For well over 3.5 centuries, the Egyptians controlled Canaan. Although there were numerous rebellions and the loss and regaining of territory. The Egyptians were successful at their top priority, which was to control and protect the road of horrors, which allowed them to control military and economic movement in the region. To over-generalize, things were pretty peaceful and prosperous for hundreds of years. Egypt engaged in diplomacy with other near eastern empires and things were nice then to cut a long story very short. In a short amount of time empires collapsed, almost everyone died. People forgot how to read and write and the whole near east fell into a very, very, very dark age. This was called the Bronze Age collapse. If you want to know more about the Bronze Age collapse, I made some videos about it that you may be interested in. But back to Canaan on the coastal plain.
While things were falling apart, the palace set who are members of a band of baffling bad time boat bound brigands commonly referred to as the sea peoples. We're resettling Canaan After a felled amphibious assault on the Nile delta After a few decades Egypt withdrew from Canaan. The palace set, who are likely of Indian origin assimilated together with surviving Canaanites of the coastal plain and they became the Philistines who filled the power vacuum on the coastal plain. While Hebrew tribes filled the power vacuum in much of the interior, these tribes later formed into the kingdom of Israel, which split into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Israel's new capital city of Samaria became the new power centre in the north and was the longtime rival of the army and kingdom of Damascus. The unconquered Canaanites on the northern coast recovered relatively quickly and are more commonly known by their greek name the Phoenicians.
They would go on to found the city of Carthage, which is famous for its wars with Rome and its brilliance. General Hannibal. All of the states in the Levant were either conquered or vase realized by the Assyrian empire. A long string of succeeding empires controlled the region. Over time, the common language of the region changed from Semitic dialects to Aramaic and then greek and then Arabic. In a slow process, new people assimilated with the old. In today's modern population of the region, Many are partial descendants of the ancient Canaanites, but exactly who is related to these ancient people and to what proportion has been a matter of heated debate. However, whatever the case maybe we should all strive to treat our fellow human beings with dignity and respect the way one treats people should be based on their actions, they take not whoever their ancestors were.