Southern Levant

As a strictly geographical description, it is sometimes used by archaeologists and historians to avoid the religious and political connotations of other names for this area.

Like much of Southwestern Asia, the Southern Levant is an arid region consisting mostly of desert and dry steppe, with a thin strip of wetter, temperate climate along the Mediterranean coast.

Consequently, it has a rich Stone Age archaeology, stretching back as early as 1.5 million years ago.

[citation needed] With one of the earliest sites for urban settlements, it also corresponds to the western parts of the Fertile Crescent.

[14] Across the region, precipitation is both highly seasonal―most rain falls between October and May, and hardly any in the summer—and subject to large, unpredictable inter-annual variation.

The different ages in turn are often divided up into sequential or sometimes parallel chrono-cultural facies, sometimes called “cultures” or “periods”.

[17] The Southern Levant is amongst the oldest inhabited parts of Eurasia, being on one of three plausible routes by which early hominins could have dispersed out of Africa (along with the Bab al Mandab and the Strait of Gibraltar).

[18] Homo erectus left Africa and became the first hominin species to colonise Europe and Asia approximately two million years ago, probably through the Southern Levant.

[19][20] During this phase of the Pleistocene epoch the region was wetter and greener, allowing H. erectus to find places with fresh water as it followed other African animals that were dispersing out of Africa at the same time.

[citation needed] The following Chalcolithic period includes the first evidence of metallurgy with copper making its appearance.

In this period the name is apt; true bronze (a tin alloy of copper) makes its appearance in this time span.

[citation needed] The 333 BCE conquest of the region by Alexander the Great is accepted as the beginning of the Hellenistic period.