The people who settled in the highlands were likely a “mixed multitude.” Most were displaced Canaanite farmers running from the collapsed coastal cities, joined by local nomads called the Shasu. This process is called ethnogenesis—the birth or formation of a new ethnic group from within, rather than a foreign army invading from the outside. The most important historical proof of this group is the Merneptah Stele (a carved stone monument from Egypt dated to 1208 BCE). It contains the oldest known mention of “Israel.” Crucially, the Egyptian writers used a specific symbol (a hieroglyph) that meant “a wandering group of people,” not a settled nation or a kingdom. This perfectly matches what archaeologists find in the ground.

Surviving in the steep, rocky highlands required new technology. The settlers built agricultural terracing (cutting flat steps into the hillsides to farm) and carved plaster-lined cisterns into the rock to catch and store rainwater. They stored their food in large, heavy clay pots known as collared-rim store jars. Their villages were filled with Four-Room Houses—a specific type of building that kept livestock on the ground floor and the family upstairs. This building style suggests a society based on family equality rather than a strict class system.

Early Israelite identity formed by contrasting itself with the neighboring Philistines. The Philistines lived in five rich coastal cities (a pentapolis) and loved eating pork. Zooarchaeology (the study of ancient animal bones) shows that the highland Israelites avoided eating pigs entirely. Before this became a strict religious law in the Bible, it was likely an ecological choice and a “boundary marker”—a way for the highlanders to say, “We are different from the city-dwelling Philistines.”

Methodological Caveat (A warning about how we study history): Reconstructing this era is difficult because of survival bias. This means history tends to preserve the lives of the rich and powerful. Huge stone temples and royal monuments survive for thousands of years, but the mud-brick homes of ordinary farmers wash away. Therefore, archaeology naturally gives us a better picture of the elite class than of the everyday peasant.