It's moderate to imagine t);lat the villagers of Canaan have been pressured to be aware of neighborhood subsistence and not produced an important surplus of grain over' and above what they wanted for themselves. hence the highland and desert-fringe pastoralists needed to adapt to the recent stipulations and bring their very own grain. quickly, the necessities of farming wo~ld reason a discount within the diversity of seasonal migrations. Flocks may then must be lowered because the interval of migrations grew shorter, and with an increasing number of attempt invested in agriculture, an enduring shift to sedentarization happened. the method that we describe here's, in reality, the other ofwhat we have now within the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was once an end result of the cave in of the Canaanite tradition, now not its reason. And lots of the 'Israelites didn't come from outdoor Canaan-they emerged from inside of it. there has been no mass Exodus from Egypt. there has been no violent conquest of Canaan. the general public who shaped early Israel have been neighborhood people-the related humans whom we see within the highlands during the Bronze and Iron a while. The early Israelites have been- irony of ironies-themselves initially Canaanites! In What experience used to be historical Israel distinct? within the extra fertile components of the highlands east of the Jordan, we see an analogous ups and'-downs in sedentary activi. ty, an identical quandary within the overdue Bronze Age, Who have been the Israelites? and the exact same wave of cost within the Iron Age 1. Archaeological surveys conducted in Jordan have published that the cost background of the territories of Ammon, Moab, and Edom was once widely just like these of early Israel. shall we take our archaeological description of a standard Iron Age I Israelite village within the highlands west of the Jordan and use it as an outline of an early Moabite village with nearly no switch. those humans lived within the related type of villages, in related homes, used comparable pottery, and led a nearly exact lifestyle. but from the Bible and different ancient resources, we lenow that the folk who lived within the villages of the Iron Age I east of the Jordan didn't turn into Israelites; as an alternative, they later shaped the kingdoms of Ammon, Moab, and Edom. So, is there aoything particular within the villages of the folk who shaped early Israel that amazing them from their buddies? do we say how their e't:hnicity and nationality crystallized? at the present time, as long ago, humans reveal their ethnicity in lots of other ways: in language, faith, customs of costume, burial practices, and tricky nutritional taboos. the easy fabric tradition left through the highland herders and farmers who turned the 1st Israelites bargains no transparent indication in their dialect, spiritual rituals, gown, or burial practices. yet one very attention-grabbing element approximately their nutritional conduct has been stumbled on. Bones recovered from the excavations of the small early Israelite villages within the highlands fluctuate from settlements in different components of the rustic in a single major appreciate: there are not any pigs.