Who dwelled in Israel first
Executive summary
The earliest historically attested inhabitants of the land conventionally called Israel/Palestine were the Canaanite peoples of the ancient Levant, a Semitic population present in the Bronze Age and described in classical sources and modern scholarship [1] [2]. The group later identified as Israelites emerged in the hill country during the late second millennium–early first millennium BCE and developed into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, while claims of continuous Jewish and Arab indigeneity reflect overlapping, centuries‑long presences and later political narratives [3] [4] [5].
1. Canaanites first: the indigenous Bronze‑Age population
Archaeological and encyclopedic surveys identify the Canaanites as the indigenous inhabitants of the ancient Levant — the city‑based, Semitic peoples who dominated Bronze‑Age Palestine before the appearance of Israelite culture — and they are explicitly named in historical summaries of the region [1] [2]. Sources describe a landscape of fortified Canaanite city‑states and a recognizable material culture across what later sources call Palestine, and modern institutions like Britannica and Smarthistory treat the Canaanites as the pre‑Israelite population of the region [1] [2].
2. Emergence of Israel: hill‑country settlers in the Late Bronze / Early Iron Age
Scholars place the first identifiable Israelite settlements in the central hill country between Jerusalem and Shechem in the late second millennium to early first millennium BCE, a pattern visible in the archaeological record as small, unwalled villages that later coalesced into the polities called Israel and Judah [3]. Ancient inscriptions such as the Merneptah Stele (circa 1250 BCE) provide an external reference to “Israel” in Canaan, while later biblical narratives frame a unifying monarchy under figures like David and Solomon by the 10th century BCE [3] [6].
3. Continuity, displacement, and competing indigeneity claims
Arguments about “who was first” are complicated by long, overlapping histories: Jewish historical narratives and many scholars assert a multi‑millennial Jewish presence and claim indigeneity based on ancient kingdoms, continuous religious ties, and population genetics cited by some analysts [5] [7]. At the same time, modern Palestinian Arab identity reflects local continuity and centuries of habitation, with narratives emphasizing the medieval and Ottoman‑era Arab majority in rural and urban communities up to the 20th century; sources note that Arab cultural dominance in the region consolidated well after the ancient Iron Age [8] [7].
4. How modern politics reshapes ancient facts
Contemporary political claims selectively draw on different parts of this layered history: Zionist movement leaders explicitly invoked ancient Israelite history in efforts to establish a modern Jewish homeland, formalized politically by the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and subsequent settlement waves [4]. Conversely, nationalist Palestinian discourse underscores continuous Arab habitation and the relatively recent colonial and mandate period disruptions; both sides thus mobilize ancient and medieval history to legitimize modern territorial claims [4] [8].
5. Limits of the record and the sensible answer
The available reporting robustly supports that Canaanite peoples predated the Israelite cultural identity in the land and that Israelites appear archaeologically and in external inscriptions by the late second millennium BCE [2] [3]. Sources also document later, continuous Jewish presence and the rise of Arab-majority communities over many centuries, meaning “first” depends on temporal framing: the Canaanites were the earliest documented inhabitants in the Bronze Age, while Israelites emerged later and Jews and Palestinians today both base claims on deep, overlapping histories [1] [5] [8]. The reviewed sources do not provide exhaustive prehistoric demographic data, so assertions about absolute first human dwellers before the Bronze Age cannot be confirmed from this reporting [1] [2].