{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.
