These valleys were especially
fertile and attractive in the territory later known as Galilee and
Samaria. The wide Plain of Esdraelon and its eastward extension,
the Valley of Jezreel, cut straight across the central plateau of
Palestine. The Plain of Esdraelon was the strongest centre of the
Canaanite civilization. A few outposts were established in the
Jordan valley, as for example, Laish, later known as Dan, at the
foot of Mount Hermon, and Jericho, at the southern end of the
Jordan valley. Only a few Canaanite villages were found along the
more barren hills of Southern Canaan. There the peoples and
civilization still retained the imprint of their desert origin.
Along the coast plains and across the great Plain of Esdraelon ran
the main highways that connected the three earliest and most
nourishing centres of the world's civilization: the Egyptian on the
southwest, the Amorite on the north, probably between the southern
Lebanons, and the Babylonian to the east and northeast. For
centuries the Canaanites had absorbed the ideas, institutions, and
culture of these stronger peoples.
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