{N}THE PREHISTORY OF PALESTINE{/}

{K}THE LONG PATH OF PREHISTORY{/}
{C}When Jesus made his appearance, he had reached the age of thirty years. He was known as the son of Joseph, whose father and forefathers were: Heli, Matthat, Levi... Enos, Seth and Adam - who was from God {/}[Lk_3,23] ... [Lk_3,38].
Luke sets the roots of the mystery of Christ in the depths of the human adventure. The 77 generations are evidently symbolic, but the last in the list (which is actually the first) is Adam. Luke tells us his eminent dignity in three words: {C}was from God{/}. Now, thanks to the patient work of paleontologists and pre-historians the veil over humanity and its origins is slightly lifted, and the genealogy of Luke is not less touching because of it. For hundreds of thousands of years mankind walked silently the long path of life, from generation to generation preparing humanity, in which the Word was to become flesh, sharing our human nature, in order to make us sharers of his divine nature. 
In the {N}ORIGINS{/}, we have talked of the ancestors of humankind, we have seen that these ancestors, having appeared in Africa more than a million years ago, gradually went up to Asia and Europe. Palestine then formed part of the Ghor, of the depression that extends from Syria to the Great Lakes of Africa, and in which our origins are situated. The excavations carried out in Palestine, and more specifically in Galilee, have led to the discovery of human remains that constitute the most important links in the genesis of our race.

{K}UBEIDIYEH{/}
The site of Ubeidiyeh, a few kilometres from the southern end of Lake Tiberias, has revealed a human presence which lasted from 1.300.000 B.C. until about 700.000 B.C.
So about 850.000 years ago men were cutting stones (basaltic, calcareous and silicic) to make their tools. They lived by the edge of the freshwater lake, which stretched over a zone of mangrove swamps, whose contour varied according to temperature and rainfall fluctuations. The slopes of the plateau surrounding them were covered with forests, beyond which there was only savannah. Their food was assured through hunting of deer, horses, gazelles and hippopotami. This lasted around 600.000 years.
This discovery overshadowed that of the famous "Galilean Man": a fragment of a skull that was found some time ago to the north of Lake Tiberias, belonging to someone who most likely lived around 200.000 years ago.

{K}THE MOUSTERIAN PERIOD{/}
This name is given to one of the prehistoric periods which stretches from 95.000 until 40.000 before our time. The numerous human settlements found in that sector of the Near East reveal the simultaneous presence of two different human types. On the slopes of Carmel that dominate the coastal plain, a cave gave up human remains of a not very pronounced {C}Neanderthal{/} type. Another cave close to the first one had skeletons related to modern man. On the slopes leading down from Nazareth to the plain of Yizreel, the cave of Qafzeh contained other skeletons equally related to modern man. Other discoveries impose this conclusion: that the individuals of these two types ({C}Neanderthal{/} and {C}homo sapiens sapiens{/}) had a common origin.
The comparison made from that time on with the skeletons found in Europe has made the problem of the relationship between these two races of homo sapiens advance considerably. It seems that a part of the first Neanderthal (or pre-Neanderthal) groups discovered in Italy migrated to the Near East some 100.000 years ago. Throughout the entire Mousterian period they kept their original characteristics, while their relatives who stayed in Europe were gradually acquiring more animal-like features, which gained for the word Neanderthal quite a negative value. These Neanderthal types of Palestine and of the neighbouring regions most probably represented a step toward the Cro-Magnon man, a homo sapiens sapiens who was later found in France.

{K}THE END OF THE PALEOLITHIC AND NEOLITHIC PERIODS{/}
It is known that prehistory is divided into two periods of very different duration: the {C}Paleolithic{/} (or Old Stone Age), the cut stone age, and the {C}Neolithic {/}(or the New Stone Age), the polished stone age. The first period began two million years ago; the second one lasted only eight to ten thousand years. The first is the age of man as a predator, who lived by hunting and collecting food. The second is the age of man as a settler, who started to live off agriculture and cattle raising. Between these two periods the {N}Natufian{/} culture appeared in Palestine, which lasted close to 2000 years (from 10500 to 8500 B.C.). It was then that humans settled in one place and the first houses appeared along the upper stretches of the river Jordan.

{K}A MATRIARCHAL RELIGION{/}
Sometimes it is surprising to see the feminist character of the first prehistoric cults given to the divinity. Perhaps it is because very often we forget that humans, while waiting for the Revelation, had no other alternative in their religious quest than to project onto the divine world the realities they experienced daily.
In the Near East, as in Europe, feminine figures occupy the first place among human representations. The one trait that all have in common is that they underline the attributes of maternity. This is easily explained: in a society in which the future of human groups, small in number and often far away from each other, essentially depended on the fertility of the mother and, by extension, on all fertility, humans expressed their religious beliefs through worshipping the mother god. The famous statue known as the "Venus of Brassempouy", as well as the ivory divinities of Berseba of the IV millennium, or the statues of the Cyclades stylized in the shape of a violin, expressed, up to the time humans entered the historic period, the same vision of the world of the gods.
But when the demographic expansion pushed the peoples of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to urban civilisation, to social organisation, to the conquest of new lands or to the defence of already acquired patrimony, the face of divinity also changed: The survival of the group now greatly depended on the strength and courage of man. Suddenly masculine divinities occupied the privileged places in the club of the gods... while the cities of men were protected by city walls, whose defenders or attackers were men. Even though there were still here and there, and until the days of Alexander, some feminine deities in the world of the gods, such as Cybele, the Great Mother, also called Artemis of the Ephesians (Acts 19,28) or the Mother God of the Phrygians..., Egypt, Greece and Rome imposed onto the Mediterranean world Amon, Zeus and Jupiter as fathers of the gods and of men.

{K}THE LAST PERIODS BEFORE HISTORY{/}
Between 6600 and 5500 B.C. an almost total abandonment of the great Palestinian sites occurred. Then a new population, whose origins are to be found in the north, occupied the country. During the IV millennium the first objects made of copper appeared. The pick of the miners could be heard in Timna, to the north of Eilat, and the fire of the smelting furnaces, where copper is separated from the dross, burned in the region of Beersheba: a treasure discovered on the banks of the Dead Sea, a little to the north of Massada, shows the skill of these artisans.
At the same time ivory was worked, linen was woven, oxen and pigs were domesticated. Funeral rites diversified according to place; thus in Azor, close to Tel Aviv, after a first burial, bones were deposited in small baked earth houses whose facade was adorned with a nose,  sometimes accompanied by two painted eyes or two breasts. Towards the end of the IV millennium vines, unknown until then, were introduced into Palestine and the silvery foliage of olive trees covered the hills; the use of the potter's wheel became widely used, urban life was organised and cities were surrounded by fortifications.
It was then that the nascent pharaonic Egypt and the independent cities of Sumer invented script: papyruses from the banks of the Nile were covered with hieroglyphics and Mesopotamian clay, chiselled in cuneiform writing by the stylet of the scribes gave its first texts. With this capital invention the Near East opened its doors to history.
