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Canaan

Canaan (Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; כְּנַעַן –, in pausa – ;  – ; كَنْعَانُ – ) was a Semitic-speaking civilization and region of the Southern Levant in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. Canaan had significant geopolitical importance in the Late Bronze Age Amarna Period (14th century BC) as the area where the spheres of interest of the Egyptian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Assyrian Empires converged or overlapped. Much of present-day knowledge about Canaan stems from archaeological excavation in this area at sites such as Tel Hazor, Tel Megiddo, En Esur, and Gezer.

The name "Canaan" appears throughout the Bible as a geography associated with the "Promised Land". The demonym "Canaanites" serves as an ethnic catch-all term covering various indigenous populations—both settled and nomadic-pastoral groups—throughout the regions of the southern Levant or Canaan. It is by far the most frequently used ethnic term in the Bible. Biblical scholar Mark Smith, citing archaeological findings, suggests "that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature."

The name "Canaanites" is attested, many centuries later, as the endonym of the people later known to the Ancient Greeks from c. 500 BC as Phoenicians, and after the emigration of Phoenicians and Canaanite-speakers to Carthage (founded in the 9th century BC), was also used as a self-designation by the Punics (as ) of North Africa during Late Antiquity.

Canaan
The English term "Canaan" (pronounced since c. 1500, due to the Great Vowel Shift) comes from the Hebrew כנען, via the Koine Greek Χανααν  and the Latin Canaan. It appears as Kinâḫna (𒆳𒆠𒈾𒄴𒈾, KURki-na-aḫ-na) in the Amarna letters (14th century BC) and several other ancient Egyptian texts. In Greek, it first occurs in the writings of Hecataeus (c. 550–476 BC) as "" (Χνᾶ). It is attested in Phoenician on coins from Berytus dated to the 2nd century BC.

The etymology is uncertain. An early explanation derives the term from the Semitic root, "to be low, humble, subjugated". Some scholars have suggested that this implies an original meaning of "lowlands", in contrast with Aram, which would then mean "highlands", whereas others have suggested it meant "the subjugated" as the name of Egypt's province in the Levant, and evolved into the proper name in a similar fashion to Provincia Nostra (the first Roman colony north of the Alps, which became Provence).

An alternative suggestion, put forward by Ephraim Avigdor Speiser in 1936, derives the term from Hurrian Kinaḫḫu, purportedly referring to the colour purple, so that "Canaan" and "Phoenicia" would be synonyms ("Land of Purple"). Tablets found in the Hurrian city of Nuzi in the early 20th century appear to use the term "Kinaḫnu" as a synonym for red or purple dye, laboriously produced by the Kassite rulers of Babylon from murex molluscs as early as 1600 BC, and on the Mediterranean coast by the Phoenicians from a byproduct of glassmaking. Purple cloth became a renowned Canaanite export commodity which is mentioned in Exodus. The dyes may have been named after their place of origin. The name 'Phoenicia' is connected with the Greek word for "purple", apparently referring to the same product, but it is difficult to state with certainty whether the Greek word came from the name, or vice versa. The purple cloth of Tyre in Phoenicia was well known far and wide and was associated by the Romans with nobility and royalty. However, according to Robert Drews, Speiser's proposal has generally been abandoned.

Djahy
Retjenu (Anglicised 'Retenu') was the usual ancient Egyptian name for Canaan and Syria, covering the region from Gaza in the south, to Tartous in the north. Its borders shifted with time, but it generally consisted of three regions. The region between Askalon and the Lebanon, stretching inland to the Sea of Galilee, was named Djahy, which was approximately synonymous with Canaan.

Overview
There are several periodization systems for Canaan. One of them is the following.

 * Prior to 4500 BC (prehistory – Stone Age): hunter-gatherer societies slowly giving way to farming and herding societies
 * 4500–3500 BC (Chalcolithic): early metal-working and farming
 * 3500–2000 BC (Early Bronze): prior to written records in the area
 * 2000–1550 BC (Middle Bronze): city-states
 * 1550–1200 BC (Late Bronze): Egyptian hegemony
 * 1200–various dates by region (Iron Age)

After the Iron Age the periods are named after the various empires that ruled the region: Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic (related to Greece) and Roman.

Canaanite culture developed in situ from multiple waves of migration merging with the earlier Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex, which in turn developed from a fusion of their ancestral Natufian and Harifian cultures with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming cultures, practicing animal domestication, during the 6200 BC climatic crisis which led to the Neolithic Revolution/First Agricultural Revolution in the Levant. The majority of Canaan is covered by the Eastern Mediterranean conifer–sclerophyllous–broadleaf forests ecoregion.

Chalcolithic (4500–3500 BC)

The first wave of migration, called Ghassulian culture, entered Canaan circa 4500 BC. This is the start of the Chalcolithic in Canaan. From their unknown homeland they brought an already complete craft tradition of metal work. They were expert coppersmiths; in fact, their work was the most advanced metal technology in the ancient world. Their work is similar to artifacts from the later Maykop culture, leading some scholars to believe they represent two branches of an original metalworking tradition. Their main copper mine was at Wadi Feynan. The copper was mined from the Cambrian Burj Dolomite Shale Unit in the form of the mineral malachite. All of the copper was smelted at sites in Beersheba culture.

Genetic analysis has shown that the Ghassulians belonged to the West Asian haplogroup T-M184.

The end of the Chalcolithic period saw the rise of the urban settlement of 'En Esur on the southern Mediterranean coast.

Early Bronze Age (3500–2000 BC)
By the Early Bronze Age other sites had developed, such as Ebla (where an East Semitic language, Eblaite, was spoken), which by c. 2300 BC was incorporated into the Mesopotamia-based Akkadian Empire of Sargon the Great and Naram-Sin of Akkad (biblical Accad). Sumerian references to the Mar.tu ("tent dwellers", later Amurru, i.e. Amorite) country west of the Euphrates River date from even earlier than Sargon, at least to the reign of the Sumerian king, Enshakushanna of Uruk, and one tablet credits the early Sumerian king Lugal-Anne-Mundu with holding sway in the region, although this tablet is considered less credible because it was produced centuries later.

Amorites at Hazor, Kadesh (Qadesh-on-the-Orontes), and elsewhere in Amurru (Syria) bordered Canaan in the north and northeast. (Ugarit may be included among these Amoritic entities.) The collapse of the Akkadian Empire in 2154 BC saw the arrival of peoples using Khirbet Kerak ware (pottery), coming originally from the Zagros Mountains (in modern Iran) east of the Tigris. In addition, DNA analysis revealed that between 2500–1000 BC, populations from the Chalcolithic Zagros and Bronze Age Caucasus migrated to the Southern Levant.

The first cities in the southern Levant arose during this period. The major sites were 'En Esur and Meggido. These "proto-Canaanites" were in regular contact with the other peoples to their south such as Egypt, and to the north Asia Minor (Hurrians, Hattians, Hittites, Luwians) and Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Assyria), a trend that continued through the Iron Age. The end of the period is marked by the abandonment of the cities and a return to lifestyles based on farming villages and semi-nomadic herding, although specialised craft production continued and trade routes remained open. Archaeologically, the Late Bronze Age state of Ugarit (at Ras Shamra in Syria) is considered quintessentially Canaanite, even though its Ugaritic language does not belong to the Canaanite language group proper.

A disputed reference to a "Lord of ga-na-na" in the Semitic Ebla tablets (dated 2350 BC) from the archive of Tell Mardikh has been interpreted by some scholars to mention the deity Dagon by the title "Lord of Canaan" If correct, this would suggest that Eblaites were conscious of Canaan as an entity by 2500 BC. Jonathan Tubb states that the term ga-na-na "may provide a third-millennium reference to Canaanite", while at the same time stating that the first certain reference is in the 18th century BC. See Ebla-Biblical controversy for further details.

Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 BC)
Urbanism returned and the region was divided among small city-states, the most important of which seems to have been Hazor. Many aspects of Canaanite material culture now reflected a Mesopotamian influence, and the entire region became more tightly integrated into a vast international trading network.

As early as Naram-Sin of Akkad's reign (c. 2240 BC), Amurru was called one of the "four quarters" surrounding Akkad, along with Subartu/Assyria, Sumer, and Elam. Amorite dynasties also came to dominate in much of Mesopotamia, including in Larsa, Isin and founding the state of Babylon in 1894 BC. Later on, Amurru became the Assyrian/Akkadian term for the interior of south as well as for northerly Canaan. At this time the Canaanite area seemed divided between two confederacies, one centred upon Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley, the second on the more northerly city of Kadesh on the Orontes River. An Amorite chieftain named Sumu-abum founded Babylon as an independent city-state in 1894 BC. One Amorite king of Babylonia, Hammurabi (1792–1750 BC), founded the First Babylonian Empire, which lasted only as long as his lifetime. Upon his death the Amorites were driven from Assyria but remained masters of Babylonia until 1595 BC, when they were ejected by the Hittites.

The semi-fictional Story of Sinuhe describes an Egyptian officer, Sinuhe, conducting military activities in the area of "Upper Retjenu" and "Fenekhu" during the reign of Senusret I (c. 1950 BC). The earliest bona fide Egyptian report of a campaign to "Mentu", "Retjenu" and "Sekmem" (Shechem) is the Sebek-khu Stele, dated to the reign of Senusret III (c. 1862 BC).

A letter from Mut-bisir to Shamshi-Adad I (c. 1809–1776 BC) of the Old Assyrian Empire (2025–1750 BC) has been translated: "It is in Rahisum that the brigands (habbatum) and the Canaanites (Kinahnum) are situated". It was found in 1973 in the ruins of Mari, an Assyrian outpost at that time in Syria. Additional unpublished references to Kinahnum in the Mari letters refer to the same episode. Whether the term Kinahnum refers to people from a specific region or rather people of "foreign origin" has been disputed, such that Robert Drews states that the "first certain cuneiform reference" to Canaan is found on the Alalakh statue of King Idrimi (below).

A reference to Ammiya being "in the land of Canaan" is found on the Statue of Idrimi (16th century BC) from Alalakh in modern Syria. After a popular uprising against his rule, Idrimi was forced into exile with his mother's relatives to seek refuge in "the land of Canaan", where he prepared for an eventual attack to recover his city. The other references in the Alalakh texts are:
 * AT 154 (unpublished)
 * AT 181: A list of 'Apiru people with their origins. All are towns, except for Canaan
 * AT 188: A list of Muskenu people with their origins. All are towns, except for three lands including Canaan
 * AT 48: A contract with a Canaanite hunter.

Around 1650 BC, Canaanites invaded the eastern Nile delta, where, known as the Hyksos, they became the dominant power. In Egyptian inscriptions, Amar and Amurru (Amorites) are applied strictly to the more northerly mountain region east of Phoenicia, extending to the Orontes.

Archaeological excavations of a number of sites, later identified as Canaanite, show that prosperity of the region reached its apogee during this Middle Bronze Age period, under the leadership of the city of Hazor, at least nominally tributary to Egypt for much of the period. In the north, the cities of Yamkhad and Qatna were hegemons of important confederacies, and it would appear that biblical Hazor was the chief city of another important coalition in the south.

Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BC)
In the early Late Bronze Age, Canaanite confederacies centered on Megiddo and Kadesh, before being fully brought into the Egyptian Empire and Hittite Empire. Later still, the Neo-Assyrian Empire assimilated the region.

According to the Bible, the migrant ancient Semitic-speaking peoples who appear to have settled in the region included (among others) the Amorites, who had earlier controlled Babylonia. The Hebrew Bible mentions the Amorites in the Table of Peoples (Book of Genesis 10:16–18a). Evidently, the Amorites played a significant role in the early history of Canaan. In Book of Genesis 14:7 f., Book of Joshua 10:5 f., Book of Deuteronomy 1:19 f., 27, 44, we find them located in the southern mountain country, while verses such as Book of Numbers 21:13, Book of Joshua 9:10, 24:8, 12, etc., tell of two great Amorite kings residing at Heshbon and Ashteroth, east of the Jordan. Other passages, including Book of Genesis 15:16, 48:22, Book of Joshua 24:15, Book of Judges 1:34, regard the name Amorite as synonymous with "Canaanite". The name Amorite is, however, never used for the population on the coast.

In the centuries preceding the appearance of the biblical Hebrews, parts of Canaan and southwestern Syria became tributary to the Egyptian pharaohs, although domination by the Egyptians remained sporadic, and not strong enough to prevent frequent local rebellions and inter-city struggles. Other areas such as northern Canaan and northern Syria came to be ruled by the Assyrians during this period.

Under Thutmose III (1479–1426 BC) and Amenhotep II (1427–1400 BC), the regular presence of the strong hand of the Egyptian ruler and his armies kept the Amorites and Canaanites sufficiently loyal. Nevertheless, Thutmose III reported a new and troubling element in the population. Habiru or (in Egyptian) 'Apiru, are reported for the first time. These seem to have been mercenaries, brigands, or outlaws, who may have at one time led a settled life, but with bad luck or due to the force of circumstances, contributed a rootless element to the population, prepared to hire themselves to whichever local mayor, king, or princeling would pay for their support.

Although Habiru (a Sumerian ideogram glossed as "brigand" in Akkadian), and sometimes  (an Akkadian word) had been reported in Mesopotamia from the reign of the Sumerian king, Shulgi of Ur III, their appearance in Canaan appears to have been due to the arrival of a new state based in Asia Minor to the north of Assyria and based upon a Maryannu aristocracy of horse-drawn charioteers, associated with the Indo-Aryan rulers of the Hurrians, known as Mitanni.

The Habiru seem to have been more a social class than an ethnic group. One analysis shows that the majority were Hurrian, although there were a number of Semites and even some Kassite and Luwian adventurers amongst their number. The reign of Amenhotep III, as a result, was not quite so tranquil for the Asiatic province, as Habiru/'Apiru contributed to greater political instability. It is believed that turbulent chiefs began to seek their opportunities, although as a rule they could not find them without the help of a neighbouring king. The boldest of the disaffected nobles was Aziru, son of Abdi-Ashirta, who endeavoured to extend his power into the plain of Damascus. Akizzi, governor of Katna (Qatna?) (near Hamath), reported this to Amenhotep III, who seems to have sought to frustrate Aziru's attempts. In the reign of the next pharaoh, Akhenaten (reigned c. 1352 to c.  1335 BC) both father and son caused infinite trouble to loyal servants of Egypt like Rib-Hadda, governor of Gubla (Gebal), by transferring their loyalty from the Egyptian crown to the Hittite Empire under Suppiluliuma I (reigned c.  1344–1322 BC).

Egyptian power in Canaan thus suffered a major setback when the Hittites (or Hat.ti) advanced into Syria in the reign of Amenhotep III, and when they became even more threatening in that of his successor, displacing the Amorites and prompting a resumption of Semitic migration. Abdi-Ashirta and his son Aziru, at first afraid of the Hittites, afterwards made a treaty with their king, and joining with the Hittites, attacked and conquered the districts remaining loyal to Egypt. In vain did Rib-Hadda send touching appeals for aid to the distant Pharaoh, who was far too engaged in his religious innovations to attend to such messages.

The Amarna letters tell of the Habiri in northern Syria. Etakkama wrote thus to the Pharaoh: "Behold, Namyawaza has surrendered all the cities of the king, my lord to the in the land of Kadesh and in Ubi. But I will go, and if thy gods and thy sun go before me, I will bring back the cities to the king, my lord, from the Habiri, to show myself subject to him; and I will expel the."

Similarly, Zimrida, king of Sidon (named 'Siduna'), declared, "All my cities which the king has given into my hand, have come into the hand of the Habiri." The king of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba, reported to the Pharaoh: "If (Egyptian) troops come this year, lands and princes will remain to the king, my lord; but if troops come not, these lands and princes will not remain to the king, my lord."

Abdi-heba's principal trouble arose from persons called Iilkili and the sons of Labaya, who are said to have entered into a treasonable league with the Habiri. Apparently this restless warrior found his death at the siege of Gina. All these princes, however, maligned each other in their letters to the Pharaoh, and protested their own innocence of traitorous intentions. Namyawaza, for instance, whom Etakkama (see above) accused of disloyalty, wrote thus to the Pharaoh, "Behold, I and my warriors and my chariots, together with my brethren and my, and my Suti ?9 are at the disposal of the (royal) troops to go whithersoever the king, my lord, commands.'"

Around the beginning of the New Kingdom period, Egypt exerted rule over much of the Levant. Rule remained strong during the Eighteenth Dynasty, but Egypt's rule became precarious during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. Ramses II was able to maintain control over it in the stalemated battle against the Hittites at Kadesh in 1275 BC, but soon thereafter, the Hittites successfully took over the northern Levant (Syria and Amurru). Ramses II, obsessed with his own building projects while neglecting Asiatic contacts, allowed control over the region to continue dwindling. During the reign of his successor Merneptah, the Merneptah Stele was issued which claimed to have destroyed various sites in the southern Levant, including a people known as "Israel". However, archaeological findings show no destruction at any of the sites mentioned in the Merneptah Stele and so it is considered to be an exercise in propaganda, and the campaign most likely avoided the central highlands in the southern Levant. Egypt's withdrawal from the southern Levant was a protracted process lasting some one hundred years beginning in the late 13th century BC and ending close to the end of the 12th century BC. The reason for the Egypt's withdrawal was most likely a product of the political turmoil in Egypt proper rather than the invasion by the Sea Peoples as there is little evidence that the Sea Peoples caused much destruction ca. 1200 BC. Many Egyptian garrisons or sites with an “Egyptian governor's residence” in the southern Levant were abandoned without destruction including Deir al-Balah, Ascalon, Tel Mor, Tell el-Far'ah (South), Tel Gerisa, Tell Jemmeh, Tel Masos, and Qubur el-Walaydah. Not all Egyptian sites in the southern Levant were abandoned without destruction. The Egyptian garrison at Aphek was destroyed, likely in an act of warfare at the end of the 13th century. The Egyptian gate complex uncovered at Jaffa was destroyed at the end of the 12th century between 1134-1115 based on C14 dates, while Beth-Shean was partially though not completely destroyed, possibly by an earthquake, in the mid-12th century.

Amarna letters

References to Canaanites are also found throughout the Amarna letters of Pharaoh Akhenaten c. 1350 BC. In these letters, some of which were sent by governors and princes of Canaan to their Egyptian overlord Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) in the 14th century BC, are found, beside Amar and Amurru (Amorites), the two forms Kinahhi and Kinahni, corresponding to Kena and Kena'an respectively, and including Syria in its widest extent, as Eduard Meyer has shown. The letters are written in the official and diplomatic East Semitic Akkadian language of Assyria and Babylonia, though "Canaanitish" words and idioms are also in evidence. The known references are:
 * EA 8: Letter from Burna-Buriash II to Akhenaten, explaining that his merchants "were detained in Canaan for business matters", robbed and killed "in Hinnatuna of the land of Canaan" by the rulers of Acre and Shamhuna, and asks for compensation because "Canaan is your country"
 * EA 9: Letter from Burna-Buriash II to Tutankhamun, "all the Canaanites wrote to Kurigalzu saying 'come to the border of the country so we can revolt and be allied with you'"
 * EA 30: Letter from Tushratta: "To the kings of Canaan... Provide [my messenger] with safe entry into Egypt"
 * EA 109: Letter of Rib-Hadda: "Previously, on seeing a man from Egypt, the kings of Canaan fled before him, but now the sons of Abdi-Ashirta make men from Egypt prowl about like dogs"
 * EA 110: Letter of Rib-Hadda: "No ship of the army is to leave Canaan"
 * EA 131: Letter of Rib-Hadda: "If he does not send archers, they will take [Byblos] and all the other cities, and the lands of Canaan will not belong to the king. May the king ask Yanhamu about these matters."
 * EA 137: Letter of Rib-Hadda: "If the king neglects Byblos, of all the cities of Canaan not one will be his"
 * EA 367: "Hani son (of) Mairēya, "chief of the stable" of the king in Canaan"
 * EA 162: Letter to Aziru: "You yourself know that the king does not want to go against all of Canaan when he rages"
 * EA 148: Letter from Abimilku to the Pharaoh: "[The king] has taken over the land of the king for the 'Apiru. May the king ask his commissioner, who is familiar with Canaan"
 * EA 151: Letter from Abimilku to the Pharaoh: "The king, my lord wrote to me: 'write to me what you have heard from Canaan'." Abimilku describes in response what has happened in eastern Cilicia (Danuna), the northern coast of Syria (Ugarit), in Syria (Qadesh, Amurru, and Damascus) as well as in Sidon.

Other Late Bronze Age mentions
Text RS 20.182 from Ugarit is a copy of a letter of the king of Ugarit to Ramesses II concerning money paid by "the sons of the land of Ugarit" to the "foreman of the sons of the land of Canaan (*kn'ny)" According to Jonathan Tubb, this suggests that the people of Ugarit, contrary to much modern opinion, considered themselves to be non-Canaanite. The other Ugarit reference, KTU 4.96, shows a list of traders assigned to royal estates, one of the estates having three Ugaritans, an Ashdadite, an Egyptian and a Canaanite.

Ashur tablets
A Middle Assyrian letter during the reign of Shalmaneser I includes a reference to the "travel to Canaan" of an Assyrian official.

Hattusa letters
Four references are known from Hattusa:
 * An evocation to the Cedar Gods: Includes reference to Canaan alongside Sidon, Tyre and possibly Amurru
 * KBo XXVIII 1: Ramesses II letter to Hattusili III, in which Ramesses suggested he would meet "his brother" in Canaan and bring him to Egypt
 * KUB III 57 (also KUB III 37 + KBo I 17): Broken text which may refer to Canaan as an Egyptian sub-district
 * KBo I 15+19: Ramesses II letter to Hattusili III, describing Ramesses' visit to the "land of Canaan on his way to Kinza and Harita

Bronze Age collapse
Ann Killebrew has shown that cities such as Jerusalem were large and important walled settlements in the pre-Israelite Middle Bronze IIB and the Israelite Iron Age IIC period (c. 1800–1550 and c. 720–586 BC), but that during the intervening Late Bronze (LB) and Iron Age I and IIA/B Ages sites like Jerusalem were small and relatively insignificant and unfortified towns.

Just after the Amarna period, a new problem arose which was to trouble the Egyptian control of southern Canaan (the rest of the region now being under Assyrian control). Pharaoh Horemhab campaigned against Shasu (Egyptian = "wanderers") living in nomadic pastoralist tribes, who had moved across the Jordan River to threaten Egyptian trade through Galilee and Jezreel. Seti I (c. 1290 BC) is said to have conquered these Shasu, Semitic-speaking nomads living just south and east of the Dead Sea, from the fortress of Taru (Shtir?) to "Ka-n-'-na". After the near collapse of the Battle of Kadesh, Rameses II had to campaign vigorously in Canaan to maintain Egyptian power. Egyptian forces penetrated into Moab and Ammon, where a permanent fortress garrison (called simply "Rameses") was established.

Some believe the "Habiru" signified generally all the nomadic tribes known as "Hebrews", and particularly the early Israelites of the period of the "judges", who sought to appropriate the fertile region for themselves. However, the term was rarely used to describe the Shasu. Whether the term may also include other related ancient Semitic-speaking peoples such as the Moabites, Ammonites and Edomites is uncertain.

There is little evidence that any major city or settlement in the southern Levant was destroyed around 1200 BC. At Lachish, The Fosse Temple III was ritually terminated while a house in Area S appears to have burned in a house fire as the most severe evidence of burning was next to two ovens while no other part of the city had evidence of burning. After this though the city was rebuilt in a grander fashion than before. For Megiddo, most parts of the city did not have any signs of damage and it is only possible that the palace in Area AA might have been destroyed though this is not certain. While the monumental structures at Hazor were indeed destroyed, this destruction was in the mid-13th century BC long before the end of the Late Bronze Age began. However, many sites were not burned to the ground around 1200 BC including: Asqaluna, Asdudu, Tell es-Safi, Tel Batash, Tel Burna, Tel Dor, Tel Gerisa, Tell Jemmeh, Khirbet Rabud, Tel Zeror, and Tell Abu Hawam among others.

Despite many theories which claim that trade relations broke down after 1200 BC in the southern Levant, there is ample evidence that trade with other regions continued after the end of the Late Bronze Age in the Southern Levant. Archaeologist Jesse Millek has shown that while the common assuption is that trade in Cypriot and Mycenaean pottery ended around 1200 BC, trade in Cypriot pottery actually largely came to an end at 1300, while for Mycenaean pottery, this trade ended at 1250 BC, and destruction around 1200 BC could not have affected either pattern of international trade since it ended before the end of the Late Bronze Age. He has also demonstrated that trade with Egypt continued after 1200 BC. Archaeometallurgical studies performed by various teams have also shown that trade in tin, a non-local metal necessary to make bronze, did not stop or decrease after 1200 BC, even though the closest source of the metal were modern Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, or perhaps even Cornwall, England. Lead from Sardinia was still being imported to the southern Levant after 1200 BC during the early Iron Age.

Iron Age

By the Early Iron Age, the southern Levant came to be dominated by the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, besides the Philistine city-states on the Mediterranean coast, and the kingdoms of Moab, Ammon, and Aram-Damascus east of the Jordan River, and Edom to the south. The northern Levant was divided into various petty kingdoms, the so-called Syro-Hittite states and the Phoenician city-states.

The entire region (including all Phoenician/Canaanite and Aramean states, together with Israel, Philistia, and Samaria) was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire during the 10th and 9th centuries BC, and would remain so for three hundred years until the end of the 7th century BC. Emperor-kings such as Ashurnasirpal, Adad-nirari II, Sargon II, Tiglath-Pileser III, Esarhaddon, Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal came to dominate Canaanite affairs. During the Twenty-fifth Dynasty the Egyptians made a failed attempt to regain a foothold in the region, but were vanquished by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, leading to an Assyrian conquest of Egypt.

Between 616 and 605 BC the Neo-Assyrian Empire collapsed due to a series of bitter civil wars, followed by an attack by an alliance of Babylonians, Medes, and Persians and the Scythians. The Neo-Babylonian Empire inherited the western part of the empire, including all the lands in Canaan and Syria, together with Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. They successfully defeated the Egyptians and remained in the region in an attempt to regain a foothold in the Near East.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire itself collapsed in 539 BC, and the region became a part of the Achaemenid Empire. It remained so until in 332 BC it was conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, later to fall to the Roman Empire in the late 2nd century BC, and then Byzantium, until the Arab Islamic invasion and conquest of the 7th century AD.

Egyptian hieroglyphic and hieratic (1500–1000 BC)

During the 2nd millennium BC, Ancient Egyptian texts use the term "Canaan" to refer to an Egyptian-ruled colony, whose boundaries generally corroborate the definition of Canaan found in the Hebrew Bible, bounded to the west by the Mediterranean Sea, to the north in the vicinity of Hamath in Syria, to the east by the Jordan Valley, and to the south by a line extended from the Dead Sea to around Gaza. Nevertheless, the Egyptian and Hebrew uses of the term are not identical: the Egyptian texts also identify the coastal city of Qadesh in north west Syria near Turkey as part of the "Land of Canaan", so that the Egyptian usage seems to refer to the entire Levantine coast of the Mediterranean Sea, making it a synonym of another Egyptian term for this coastland, Retjenu.

Lebanon, in northern Canaan, bordered by the Litani river to the watershed of the Orontes River, was known by the Egyptians as upper Retjenu. In Egyptian campaign accounts, the term Djahi was used to refer to the watershed of the Jordan river. Many earlier Egyptian sources also mention numerous military campaigns conducted in Ka-na-na, just inside Asia.

Archaeological attestation of the name "Canaan" in Ancient Near Eastern sources relates almost exclusively to the period in which the region operated as a colony of the New Kingdom of Egypt (16th–11th centuries BC), with usage of the name almost disappearing following the Late Bronze Age collapse (c. 1206–1150 BC). The references suggest that during this period the term was familiar to the region's neighbors on all sides, although scholars have disputed to what extent such references provide a coherent description of its location and boundaries, and regarding whether the inhabitants used the term to describe themselves.

16 references are known in Egyptian sources, from the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt onwards.
 * Amenhotep II inscriptions: Canaanites are included in a list of prisoners of war
 * Three topographical lists
 * Papyrus Anastasi I 27,1" refers to the route from Sile to Gaza "the [foreign countries] of the end of the land of Canaan"
 * Merneptah Stele
 * Papyrus Anastasi IIIA 5–6 and Papyrus Anastasi IV 16,4 refer to "Canaanite slaves from Hurru"
 * Papyrus Harris After the collapse of the Levant under the so-called "Peoples of the Sea" Ramesses III (c. 1194 BC) is said to have built a temple to the god Amen to receive tribute from the southern Levant. This was described as being built in Pa-Canaan, a geographical reference whose meaning is disputed, with suggestions that it may refer to the city of Gaza or to the entire Egyptian-occupied territory in the south west corner of the Near East.

Greco-Roman historiography
The Greek term Phoenicia is first attested in the first two works of Western literature, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. It does not occur in the Hebrew Bible, but occurs three times in the New Testament in the Book of Acts. In the 6th century BC, Hecataeus of Miletus affirms that Phoenicia was formerly called χνα, a name that Philo of Byblos subsequently adopted into his mythology as his eponym for the Phoenicians: "Khna who was afterwards called Phoinix". Quoting fragments attributed to Sanchuniathon, he relates that Byblos, Berytus and Tyre were among the first cities ever built, under the rule of the mythical Cronus, and credits the inhabitants with developing fishing, hunting, agriculture, shipbuilding and writing.

Coins of the city of Beirut / Laodicea bear the legend, "Of Laodicea, a metropolis in Canaan"; these coins are dated to the reign of Antiochus IV (175–164 BC) and his successors until 123 BC. Saint Augustine also mentions that one of the terms the seafaring Phoenicians called their homeland was "Canaan". Augustine also records that the rustic people of Hippo in North Africa retained the Punic self-designation Chanani. Since 'punic' in Latin also meant 'non-Roman', some scholars however argue that the language referred to as Punic in Augustine may have been Libyan.

The Greeks also popularized the term Palestine, named after the Philistines or the Aegean Pelasgians, for roughly the region of Canaan, excluding Phoenicia, with Herodotus' first recorded use of Palaistinê, c. 480 BC. From 110 BC, the Hasmoneans extended their authority over much of the region, creating a Judean-Samaritan-Idumaean-Ituraean-Galilean alliance. The Judean (Jewish, see Ioudaioi) control over the wider area resulted in it also becoming known as Judaea, a term that had previously only referred to the smaller region of the Judean Mountains, the allotment of the Tribe of Judah and heartland of the former Kingdom of Judah. Between 73–63 BC, the Roman Republic extended its influence into the region in the Third Mithridatic War, conquering Judea in 63 BC, and splitting the former Hasmonean Kingdom into five districts. Around 130–135 AD, as a result of the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt, the province of Iudaea was joined with Galilee to form new province of Syria Palaestina. There is circumstantial evidence linking Hadrian with the name change, although the precise date is not certain, and the interpretation of some scholars that the name change may have been intended "to complete the dissociation with Judaea" is disputed.

Later sources
Padiiset's Statue is the last known Egyptian reference to Canaan, a small statuette labelled "Envoy of the Canaan and of Peleset, Pa-di-Eset, the son of Apy". The inscription is dated to 900–850 BC, more than 300 years after the preceding known inscription.

During the period from c. 900–330 BC, the dominant Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid Empire make no mention of Canaan.

Canaanites
The Canaanites were the inhabitants of ancient Canaan, a region that roughly corresponds to present-day Israel and Palestine, western Jordan, southern and coastal Syria, Lebanon, and continued up to the southern border of Turkey. They are believed to have been one of the oldest civilizations in human history.

History
The Levant was inhabited by people who referred to the land as ka-na-na-um as early as the mid-third millennium BC. The Akkadian word "kinahhu" referred to the purple-coloured wool, dyed from the Murex molluscs of the coast—which was a key export of the region. When the ancient Greeks later traded with the Canaanites, this meaning of the word seems to have predominated, as they referred to the Canaanites as Phoenikes (Φοίνικες; Phoenicians), which may derive from the Greek-language word "phoenix" (φοίνιξ; ), and also described the cloth for which the Greeks traded. The word "phoenix" was transcribed by the Romans to "poenus"; the descendants of the Canaanite settlers in Carthage were likewise referred to as Punic.

Thus, while "Phoenician" and "Canaanite" refer to the same culture, archaeologists and historians commonly refer to the Bronze Age pre-1200 BC Levantine peoples as Canaanites, while their Iron Age descendants, particularly those living on the coast, are referred to as Phoenicians. More recently, the term "Canaanite" has been used for the secondary Iron Age states of the Levantine interior that were not ruled by Aramean peoples, that is, that were ruled by a separate and closely related ethnic group which included the Philistines and the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Culture
According to archaeologist Jonathan N. Tubb, "Ammonites, Moabites, Israelites, and Phoenicians undoubtedly achieved their own cultural identities, and yet ethnically they were all Canaanites", "the same people who settled in farming villages in the region in the 8th millennium BC."

There is uncertainty about whether the name "Canaan" refers to a specific Semitic-speaking ethnic group wherever they live, the homeland of this ethnic group, a region under the control of this ethnic group, or perhaps any combination of the three.

Canaanite civilization was a response to long periods of stable climate interrupted by short periods of climate change. During these periods, Canaanites profited from their intermediary position between the ancient civilizations of the Middle East—Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia), the Hittites, and Minoan Crete—to become city states of merchant princes along the coast, with small kingdoms specializing in agricultural products in the interior. This polarity, between coastal towns and agrarian hinterland, was illustrated in Canaanite mythology by the struggle between the storm god, variously called Teshub (Hurrian) or Ba'al Hadad (Semitic Amorite/Aramean) and Ya'a, Yaw, or Yam, god of the sea and rivers. Early Canaanite civilization was characterized by small walled market towns, surrounded by peasant farmers growing a range of local horticultural products, along with commercial growing of olives, grapes for wine, and pistachios, surrounded by extensive grain cropping, predominantly wheat and barley. Harvest in early summer was a season when transhumance nomadism was practiced—shepherds staying with their flocks during the wet season and returning to graze them on the harvested stubble, closer to water supplies in the summer. Evidence of this cycle of agriculture is found in the Gezer calendar and in the biblical cycle of the year.

Periods of rapid climate change generally saw a collapse of this mixed Mediterranean farming system; commercial production was replaced with subsistence agricultural foodstuffs; and transhumance pastoralism became a year-round nomadic pastoral activity, whilst tribal groups wandered in a circular pattern north to the Euphrates, or south to the Egyptian delta with their flocks. Occasionally, tribal chieftains would emerge, raiding enemy settlements and rewarding loyal followers from the spoils or by tariffs levied on merchants. Should the cities band together and retaliate, a neighbouring state intervene or should the chieftain suffer a reversal of fortune, allies would fall away or intertribal feuding would return. It has been suggested that the Patriarchal tales of the Bible reflect such social forms.

Since 3100 BC, most Canaanites, particularly those that lived in Palestine, lived in walled settlements in the plains and coastal regions. These settlements were surrounded by mud-brick fortifications and agricultural hamlets, which the inhabitants relied on for food. In 2nd millennium BC, urban Canaanite elites ruled over rural and pastoral areas. The material culture of the city-states was relatively uniform. New burial customs were implicitly influenced by a belief in the afterlife.

During the periods of the collapse of Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia and the First Intermediate Period of Egypt, the Hyksos invasions and the end of the Middle Bronze Age in Assyria and Babylonia, and the Late Bronze Age collapse, trade through the Canaanite area would dwindle, as Egypt, Babylonia, and to a lesser degree Assyria, withdrew into their isolation. When the climates stabilized, trade would resume firstly along the coast in the area of the Philistine and Phoenician cities. As markets redeveloped, new trade routes that would avoid the heavy tariffs of the coast would develop from Kadesh Barnea, through Hebron, Lachish, Jerusalem, Bethel, Samaria, Shechem, Shiloh through Galilee to Jezreel, Hazor, and Megiddo. Secondary Canaanite cities would develop in this region. Further economic development would see the creation of a third trade route from Eilath, Timna, Edom (Seir), Moab, Ammon, and thence to the Aramean states of Damascus and Palmyra. Earlier states (for example the Philistines and Tyrians in the case of Judah and Samaria, for the second route, and Judah and Israel for the third route) tried generally unsuccessfully to control the interior trade.

Eventually, the prosperity of this trade would attract more powerful regional neighbours, such as Ancient Egypt, Assyria, the Babylonians, Persians, Ancient Greeks, and Romans, who would control the Canaanites politically, levying tribute, taxes, and tariffs. Often in such periods, thorough overgrazing would result in a climatic collapse and a repeat of the cycle (e.g., PPNB, Ghassulian, Uruk, and the Bronze Age cycles already mentioned). The fall of later Canaanite civilization occurred with the incorporation of the area into the Greco-Roman world (as Iudaea province), and after Byzantine times, into the Umayyad Caliphate. Western Aramaic, one of the two lingua francas of Canaanite civilization, is still spoken in a number of small Syrian villages, whilst Phoenician Canaanite disappeared as a spoken language in about 100 CE. A separate Akkadian-infused Eastern Aramaic is still spoken by the existing Assyrians of Iraq, Iran, northeast Syria, and southeast Turkey.

Tel Kabri contains the remains of a Canaanite city from the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 BC). The city, the most important of the cities in the Western Galilee during that period, had a palace at its center. Tel Kabri is the only Canaanite city that can be excavated in its entirety because after the city was abandoned, no other city was built over its remains. It is notable because the predominant extra-Canaanite cultural influence is Minoan; Minoan-style frescoes decorate the palace.

Significant figures
Figures mentioned in historiography or known through archaeology

• Ammittamru I of Ugarit (Amarna letters)
 * Rulers of Ugarit

• Niqmaddu II of Ugarit (Amarna letters) (1349–1315 BC)

• Arhalba of Ugarit (1315–1313 BC)

• Niqmepa of Ugarit (1313–1260 BC)

• Ammittamru II of Ugarit (1260–1235 BC)

• Ibiranu of Ugarit (1235–1220 BC)

• Ammurapi of Ugarit (1215–1185 BC)

• Abibaal 990–978 BC
 * Rulers of Tyre

• Hiram I 978–944 BC

• Baal-Eser I (Balbazer I) 944–927 BC

• Abdastartus 927–918 BC

• Astarymus 906–897 BC

• Phelles 897–896 BC

• Ithobaal I 896–863 BC

• Baal-Eser II (Balbazer II) 863–829 BC

• Mattan I 829–820 BC

• Pygmalion 820–774 BC

• Ithobaal II 750–739 BC

• Hiram II 739–730 BC

• Luli 729 694 BC

• Baal I 680–660 BC

• Abbar 563–562 BC

• Abdemon c. 420–411 BC

 * Others
 * Aziru, ruler of Amurru (Amarna letters)
 * Labaya, lord of Shechem (Amarna letters)
 * Abdi-Heba, local chieftain of pre-Israelite Jerusalem (Jebus) (Amarna letters)
 * Šuwardata, king of the Canaanite city of Gath or 'mayor' of Qiltu (Amarna letters)
 * Cronos (Ilus), founder of Byblos according to Sanchuniathon

Genetic studies
A 2017 study of five Canaanite skeletons found that approximately half of the skeletons’ genes originated from agricultural settlers in the Levant around 10,000 years ago. The other half was from a population tied to Iran, which researchers estimate arrived in the Levant approximately 5,000 years ago.

Hajjej (2018) revealed that when using HLA genes, Levantine Arabs, such as Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians, were closely related populations with common Canaanite ancestry. They shared a common geographic territory, which was later disrupted by 19th century British and French colonization. Their Canaanite ancestors came from North Africa or the Arabian peninsula via Egypt in 3300 BC and settled in the Levant lowlands after the Ghassulian collapse in 3800-3350 BC. The Levantine Arabs were also related to East Mediterranean populations, such as Turks, Greeks and Cretans, Egyptians and Iranians, which can be explained by high migratory flow between Levantine sub-regions. However, Levantine Arabs were genetically distant from Arabian Peninsula populations such as Saudis, Kuwaitis and Yeminis before the 7th century Islamic conquests.

Agranat-Tamir et al. (2020) stated that Canaanites from the Intermediate Bronze Age (c. 2500- 2000 BC) to late Iron Age I (c. 1000 BC) were genetically similar to each other. They lived in modern Israel, Jordan and Lebanon and could be modeled as "a mixture of local earlier Neolithic populations and populations from the northeastern part of the Near East (i.e. Zagros Mountains, Caucasians/Armenians and possibly, Hurrians)". Exceptions include the 2nd millennium BC inhabitants of Sidon, Abel Beth Maacah and Ashkelon, who were relatively heterogenous due to inflow from the eastern Mediterranean basin. The inhabitants of Ba'qah in Jordan also have probable admixture from "eastern desert groups". Following the Bronze Age, there was an addition of European-related and East African-related components, which were represented by Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Europeans and Somalis, from a north-south and south-north gradient respectively. The majority of modern Jewish and Levantine Arabic-speaking groups have 50% or more ancestry from peoples who were related to Bronze Age Levantines and Chalcolithic Zagros groups. But they have other ancestries that cannot be modeled by the available ancient DNA data.

Almarri et al. (2021) stated that Levantines and Arabians diverged from each other before the Neolithic period, with Levantines adopting a sedentary agricultural lifestyle. In the Bronze Age, immigrants with ancient Iranian-related ancestry replaced about 50% of the local Levantine ancestry. They were believed to introduce haplogroup J1, which was not found in earlier Levantines. After the Bronze Age, Eastern Hunter Gatherer (EHG) ancestry was introduced, coinciding with the arrival of peoples with southeast European and Anatolian ancestry. Modern Levantines have significantly higher EHG ancestry than Arabians.

Lazaridis et al. (2022) clarified that ancient Levantines and their descendants exhibit a decrease of ~8% local Neolithic ancestry, which is mostly Natufian, every millennium, starting from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Medieval period. It was largely replaced by Caucasus-related and Anatolian-related ancestries, from the north and west respectively. However, despite the decline in the Natufian component, this key ancestry source made an important contribution to peoples of later periods, continuing until the present.

Hebrew Bible
Canaan and the Canaanites are mentioned some 160 times in the Hebrew Bible, mostly in the Torah and the books of Joshua and Judges.

They descended from Canaan, who was the son of Ham and the grandson of Noah. Canaan was cursed with perpetual slavery because his father Ham had "looked upon" the drunk and naked Noah. The expression "look upon" at times has sexual overtones in the Bible, as in Leviticus 20:11, "The man who lies with his father's wife has uncovered his father's nakedness..." As a result, interpreters have proposed a variety of possibilities as to what kind of transgression has been committed by Ham, including the possibility of castration, homosexual rape or maternal incest. However, some believe that Canaan was the perpetrator of the crime, based on the surrounding verses.

According to the Table of Nations, Canaan was also the ancestor of other nations, which were collectively considered to be Canaanite:

"Canaan is the father of Sidon, his firstborn; and of the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites, and Hamathites. Later the Canaanite clans scattered, and the borders of Canaan reached [across the Mediterranean coast] from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, and then [inland around the Jordan Valley ] toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha."

The biblical ethnogenesis of Canaan is increasingly problematic as many scholars hold there is archaeological and linguistic evidence that suggests the Israelites were Canaanites themselves. In particular, they were a sub-set of Canaanite culture. Alternatively, other scholars have suggested that the Israelites originated from the Shasu and other seminomadic peoples from the desert regions south of the Levant, only later settling in the highlands of Canaan. It has been also suggested that the Hamitic origin myth could be a reference to Canaan's colonization by the Egyptians in the Late Bronze Age, who were Hamites according to the Hebrew Bible.

Brian R. Doak argues that "Canaanite" does not necessarily refer to the direct blood descendants of Canaan. Instead, it refers to all ancient peoples that settled in the geographic region of Canaan, including the Israelites. In fact, only five nations overlap in and. In the conquest and Ezra-Nehemiah narratives, "Canaanite" is not necessarily an ethnonym but a descriptor of non-Israelite Canaanites who embody the "symbol(s) of the religious practices Israel should avoid" or all idolaters in Canaan, including Israelites. A similar approach is taken by later Judeo-Christian literature.

In addition, biblical scholar David Frankel argues that a narrative in the Books of Chronicles tenuously indicates the historical reality of Israel's ethnogenesis. In this text, a reference is made to an established Israelite presence in Canaan before Joshua's conquest, which primarily consisted of Ephraimites.

According to the Hebrew Bible, Canaan was located to the west of the Jordan River. The Canaanites were described as living "by the sea, and along by the side of the Jordan" (Book of Numbers 13:29) and "around Jordan" (Book of Joshua 22:9). More specifically,  they inhabited the Mediterranean coastlands, including Lebanon corresponding to Phoenicia  and the Gaza Strip corresponding to Philistia  and the Jordan Valley. Numbers 34:3–12 provides even more specific boundaries, which covered territory that was considered to be "small" for ancient standards.

John N. Oswalt observes that "Canaan consists of the land west of the Jordan and is distinguished from the area east of the Jordan." Oswalt then goes on to say that in Scripture, Canaan "takes on a theological character" as "the land which is God's gift" and "the place of abundance".

Whilst the inhabitants of Canaan are called Canaanites, they are also called Amorites, similar to the citizens of the multi-ethnic Soviet Union being called Russian, and Hethites/Hittites. Abraham, the ancestor of the Israelites, was most likely an Amorite-Aramean, according to some early theories.

Conquest of Canaan
Yahweh promises the land of Canaan to Abraham in the Book of Genesis and eventually delivers it to descendants of Abraham, the Israelites. The Hebrew Bible describes the Israelite conquest of Canaan in the "Former Prophets", viz. the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. These books give the narrative of the Israelites after the death of Moses and their entry into Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. The renaming of the Land of Canaan as the Land of Israel marks the Israelite conquest of the Promised Land.

The Canaanites are said to have been one of seven "nations" driven out by the Israelites following the Exodus. The other nations were the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. One of the 613 commandments prescribes that no inhabitants of the cities of six Canaanite nations, the same as mentioned in 7:1, minus the Girgashites, were to be left alive. .

Kingdom of Israel and Judah
After the Israelite conquest of Canaan, Canaan existed as a kritarchy and later, a monarchy. Under the Israelite monarchy, the Israelite tribes were united as one kingdom. However, it split into the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah.

In 738 BC, the Neo-Assyrian empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel. In 586 BC, the Kingdom of Judah was annexed into the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The city of Jerusalem fell after a siege which lasted either eighteen or thirty months. By 586 BC, much of Judah was devastated, and the former kingdom suffered a steep decline of both economy and population.

Significant figures
• Canaan, son of Ham (Gen. 10:6)
 * Characters in the Hebrew Bible

• Sidon, firstborn son of Canaan (Gen. 10:15)

• Heth, son of Canaan (Gen. 10:15)

• Sihon, king of Amorites (Deut 1:4)

• Og, king of Bashan (Deut 1:4)

• Adonizedek, king of Jerusalem (Josh. 10:1)

• Debir, king of Eglon (Josh. 10:3)

• Jabin, name of two kings of Hazor (Josh. 11:1; Judges 5:6)

New Testament
"Canaan" (Χανάαν) is used only twice in the New Testament: both times in Acts of the Apostles when paraphrasing Old Testament stories. Additionally, the derivative (Χαναναία, "Canaanite woman") is used in Matthew's version of the exorcism of the Syrophoenician woman's daughter, while the Gospel of Mark uses the term  (Συροφοινίκισσα). It is implied that the New Testament authors considered all non-Jewish inhabitants in the northern coastlines of Canaan to be Canaanite.

Uses of the name
By the Second Temple period (530 BC – 70 AD), "Canaanite" in the Hebrew language had come to be not an ethnic designation, so much as a general synonym for "merchant", as it is interpreted in, for example, Book of Job 40:30, or Book of Proverbs 31:24.

The name "Canaanites" is attested as the endonym of the people later known to the Ancient Greeks from c. 500 BC as Phoenicians, and following the emigration of Canaanite-speakers to Carthage (founded in the 9th century BC), was also used as a self-designation by the Punics (chanani) of North Africa during Late Antiquity.

The Septuagint (3rd and 2nd century BC) mostly renders Canaan as Χαναάν (Khanaan), but on two occasions as "Phoenicia" (Exod 16:35 and Josh 5:12).

Legacy
"Canaan" is used as a synonym of the Promised Land; for instance, it is used in this sense in the hymn "Canaan's Happy Shore", with the lines: "Oh, brothers, will you meet me, (3x)/On Canaan's happy shore," a hymn set to the tune later used in The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

In the 1930s and 1940s, some Revisionist Zionist intellectuals in Mandatory Palestine founded the ideology of Canaanism, which sought to create a unique Hebrew identity, rooted in ancient Canaanite culture, rather than a Jewish one.

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion observed the contradictions between the secular and biblical records of Jewish indigeneity to Canaan, which was nonetheless affirmed in the Declaration of Independence. Whilst he used secular arguments to justify Jewish indigeneity, he argued that the biblical narrative of Abraham migrating to Canaan was a "reunion with indigenous Hebrews who shared his theological belief". He also argued that not all Hebrews joined Jacob's family when they migrated to Egypt and later, birthed the generation of the Hebrews that endured the Exodus. Some professors find this view tenable, based on, which preserved heterodox traditions of Jewish indigeneity.

title: Canaan


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Eric Williams

Eric Eustace Williams (25 September 1911 – 29 March 1981) was a Trinidad and Tobago politician. He has been described as the "Father of the Nation",  having led the then British Colony of Trinidad and Tobago to majority rule on 28 October 1956, to independence on 31 August 1962, and republic status on 1 August 1976, leading an unbroken string of general elections victories with his political party, the People's National Movement, until his death in 1981. He was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and also a Caribbean historian, especially for his book entitled Capitalism and Slavery.

Early life
Williams was born on 25 September in 1911. His father Thomas Henry Williams was a minor civil servant and devout Roman Catholic, and his mother Eliza Frances Boissiere (13 April 1888 – 1969) was a descendant of the mixed French Creole elite and had African and French ancestry. He saw his first school years at Tranquillity Boys' Intermediate Government School and he was later educated at Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain, where he excelled at academics and football. A football injury at QRC led to a hearing problem which he wore a hearing aid to correct.

He won an island scholarship in 1932, which allowed him to attend St. Catherine's Society, Oxford (later renamed St. Catherine's College). In 1935, he received a first class honours degree, and ranked first among history graduates that year. He also represented the university at football. In 1938, he went on to obtain his doctorate (see section below). In Inward Hunger, his autobiography, he described his experience of studying at Oxford, including his frustrations with rampant racial discrimination at the institution, and his travels in Germany after the Nazis' seizure of power.

Scholarly career
In Inward Hunger, Williams recounts that in the period following his graduation, He was "severely handicapped in my research by my lack of money... I was turned down everywhere I tried... and could not ignore the racial factor involved". However, in 1936, thanks to a recommendation made by Sir Alfred Claud Hollis (Governor of Trinidad and Tobago, 1930–36), the Leathersellers' Company awarded him a £50 grant to continue his advanced research in history at Oxford.

He completed the D.Phil in 1938 under the supervision of Vincent Harlow. His doctoral thesis was titled The Economic Aspects of the Abolition of the Slave Trade and West Indian Slavery, and was published as Capitalism and Slavery in 1944, although excerpts of his thesis were published in 1939 by The Keys, the journal of the League of Coloured Peoples. According to Williams, Fredric Warburg – a publisher of Marxist literature, who Williams asked to publish his thesis – refused to publish, saying that "such a book... would be contrary to the British tradition". His thesis was both a direct attack on the idea that moral and humanitarian motives were the key facts in the success of the British abolitionist movement, and a covert critique of the established British historiography on the West Indies (as exemplified by, in Williams' view, the works of Oxford professor Reginald Coupland) as supportive of continued British colonial rule. Williams's argument owed much to the influence of C. L. R. James, whose The Black Jacobins, also completed in 1938, also offered an economic and geostrategic explanation for the rise of abolitionism in the Western world.

Gad Heuman states:
 * In Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams argued that the declining economies of the British West Indies led to the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery. More recent research has rejected this conclusion; it is now clear that the colonies of the British Caribbean profited considerably during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

However, Capitalism and Slavery covers the economic history of sugar and slavery beyond just the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and discusses the decline of sugar plantations from 1823 until the emancipation of the slaves in the 1830s. It also discusses the British government's use of the equalisation of the sugar duties Acts in the 1840s to sever their responsibilities to buy sugar from the British West Indian colonies, and to buy sugar on the open market from Cuba and Brazil, where it was cheaper. In support of the Williams thesis, David Ryden presented evidence to show that by the early nineteenth century there was an emerging crisis of profitability.

Williams's argument about abolitionism went far beyond this decline thesis. What he argued was that the new economic and social interest created in the 18th century by the slave-based Atlantic economy generated new pro-free trade and anti-slavery political interests. These interacted with the rise of evangelical antislavery and with the self-emancipation of slave rebels, from the Haitian Revolution of 1792–1804 to the Jamaica Christmas Rebellion of 1831, to bring the end of Slavery in the 1830s.

In 1939, Williams joined the Political Science department at Howard University. In 1943, Williams organized a conference about the "economic future of the Caribbean." He argued that small islands of the West Indies would be vulnerable to domination by the former colonial powers in the event that these islands became independent states; Williams advocated for a West Indian Federation as a solution to post-colonial dependence.

Shift to public life
In 1944, Williams was appointed to the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission. In 1948 he returned to Trinidad as the Commission's deputy chairman of the Caribbean Research Council. In Trinidad, he delivered an acclaimed series of educational lectures. In 1955, after disagreements between Williams and the Commission, the Commission elected not to renew his contract. In a speech at Woodford Square in Port of Spain, he declared that he had decided to "put down his bucket" in the land of his birth. He rechristened that enclosed park, which stood in front of the Trinidad courts and legislature, "The University of Woodford Square", and proceeded to give a series of public lectures on world history, Greek democracy and philosophy, the history of slavery, and the history of the Caribbean to large audiences drawn from every social class.

Entry into nationalist politics in Trinidad and Tobago
From that public platform on 15 January 1956, Williams inaugurated his own political party, the People's National Movement (PNM), which would take Trinidad and Tobago into independence in 1962, and dominate its post-colonial politics. Until this time his lectures had been carried out under the auspices of the Political Movement, a branch of the Teachers Education and Cultural Association, a group that had been founded in the 1940s as an alternative to the official teachers' union. The PNM's first document was its constitution. Unlike the other political parties of the time, the PNM was a highly organized, hierarchical body. Its second document was The People's Charter, in which the party strove to separate itself from the transitory political assemblages which had thus far been the norm in Trinidadian politics.

In elections held eight months later, on 24 September the Peoples National Movement won 13 of the 24 elected seats in the Legislative Council, defeating 6 of the 16 incumbents running for re-election. Although the PNM did not secure a majority in the 31-member Legislative Council, he was able to convince the Secretary of State for the Colonies to allow him to name the five appointed members of the council (despite the opposition of the Governor, Sir Edward Betham Beetham). This gave him a clear majority in the Legislative Council. Williams was thus elected Chief Minister and was also able to get all seven of his ministers elected.

Federation and independence
After the Second World War, the Colonial Office had preferred that British colonies move towards political independence in the kind of federal systems which had appeared to succeed since the Canadian confederation, which created Canada, in the 19th century. In the British West Indies, this goal coincided with the political aims of the nationalist movements which had emerged in all the colonies of the region during the 1930s. The Montego Bay conference of 1948 had declared the common aim to be the achievement by the West Indies of "Dominion Status" (which meant constitutional independence from the British government) as a Federation. In 1958, a West Indies Federation emerged from the British Caribbean, which with British Guiana (now Guyana) and British Honduras (now Belize) choosing to opt out of the Federation, leaving Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago as the dominant players. Most political parties in the various territories aligned themselves into one of two Federal political parties – the West Indies Federal Labour Party (led by Grantley Adams of Barbados and Norman Manley of Jamaica) and the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) led by Manley's cousin, Sir Alexander Bustamante. The PNM affiliated with the former, while several opposition parties (the People's Democratic Party, the Trinidad Labour Party and the Party of Political Progress Groups) aligned themselves with the DLP, and soon merged to form the Democratic Labour Party of Trinidad and Tobago.

The DLP victory in the 1958 Federal Elections and subsequent poor showing by the PNM in the 1959 County Council Elections soured Williams on the Federation. Lord Hailes (Governor-General of the Federation) also overruled two PNM nominations to the Federal Senate in order to balance a disproportionately WIFLP-dominated Senate. When Bustamante withdrew Jamaica from the Federation, this left Trinidad and Tobago in the untenable position of having to provide 75% of the Federal budget while having less than half the seats in the Federal government. In a speech, Williams declared that "one from ten leaves nought". Following the adoption of a resolution to that effect by the PNM General Council on 15 January 1962, Williams withdrew Trinidad and Tobago from the West Indies Federation. This action led the British government to dissolve the Federation.

In 1961 the PNM had introduced the Representation of the People Bill. This Bill was designed to modernise the electoral system by instituting permanent registration of voters, identification cards, voting machines and revised electoral boundaries. These changes were seen by the DLP as an attempt to disenfranchise illiterate rural voters through intimidation, to rig the elections through the use of voting machines, to allow Afro-Caribbean immigrants from other islands to vote, and to gerrymander the boundaries to ensure victory by the PNM. Opponents of the PNM saw "proof" of these allegations when A. N. R. Robinson was declared winner of the Tobago seat in 1961 with more votes than there were registered voters, and in the fact that the PNM was able to win every subsequent election until the 1980 Tobago House of Assembly Elections.

The 1961 elections gave the PNM 57% of the votes and 20 of the 30 seats. This two-thirds majority allowed them to draft the Independence Constitution without input from the DLP. Although supported by the Colonial Office, independence was blocked by the DLP, until Williams was able to make a deal with DLP leader Rudranath Capildeo that strengthened the rights of the minority party and expanded the number of Opposition Senators. With Capildeo's assent, Trinidad and Tobago became independent on 31 August 1962, 25 days after Jamaica. In addition to primeministership, Williams was also Minister of Finance from 1957 to 1961 and from 1966 to 1971.

Black Power
Between 1968 and 1970 the Black Power movement gained strength in Trinidad and Tobago. The leadership of the movement developed within the Guild of Undergraduates at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies. Led by Geddes Granger, the National Joint Action Committee joined up with trade unionists led by George Weekes of the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union and Basdeo Panday, then a young trade-union lawyer and activist. The Black Power Revolution started during the 1970 Carnival. In response to the challenge, Williams countered with a broadcast entitled "I am for Black Power". He introduced a 5% levy to fund unemployment reduction and established the first locally owned commercial bank. However, this intervention had little impact on the protests.

On 3 April 1970, a protester was killed by the police. This was followed on 13 April by the resignation of A. N. R. Robinson, Member of Parliament for Tobago East. On 18 April sugar workers went on strike, and there was the talk of a general strike. In response to this, Williams proclaimed a State of Emergency on 21 April and arrested 15 Black Power leaders. In response to this, a portion of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force, led by Raffique Shah and Rex Lassalle, mutinied and took hostages at the army barracks at Teteron. Through the action of the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard the mutiny was contained and the mutineers surrendered on 25 April.

Williams made three additional speeches in which he sought to identify himself with the aims of the Black Power movement. He reshuffled his cabinet and removed three ministers (including two White members) and three senators. He also proposed a Public Order Bill which would have curtailed civil liberties in an effort to control protest marches. After public opposition, led by A. N. R. Robinson and his newly created Action Committee of Democratic Citizens (which later became the Democratic Action Congress), the Bill was withdrawn. Attorney General Karl Hudson-Phillips offered to resign over the failure of the Bill, but Williams refused his resignation.

Death
Prime Minister Eric Eustace Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, died on 29 March 1981 due to throat cancer at his official house in St. Anne, a Port of Spain neighborhood in Trinidad and Tobago. He was 69 years old at the time of his death.

Personal life
Eric Williams had married Elsie Ribeiro, a music studies student born to a mother from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and a Portuguese Trinidadian father, on 30 January 1937, while he was a postgraduate student at Oxford University. He had known Ribeiro from Trinidad before he left for the United Kingdom. The ceremony was private out of fear that the terms of his scholarship could have prohibited marriage and he did not want it to be terminated. After he graduated, they moved to Washington, D.C. in the United States where he obtained a position at Howard University. They had a son, Alistair Williams, in 1943 and a daughter, Elsie Pamela Williams, in 1947. However, Williams questioned the paternity of Elsie Pamela, thus leading to problems in the marriage. In May 1948, Williams left Washington, D.C. to go back to Trinidad, abandoning his wife and children. His reason for not financially supporting them after leaving was because Ribeiro refused to send their children to Oxford University in the future.

After returning to Trinidad in 1948, he met Evelyn Siulan Soy Moyou, a typist 13 years his junior of Chinese descent on her father's side and Chinese, African, and Portuguese descent on her mother's side, and she was a niece of Solomon Hochoy, the future Governor and Governor-General of Trinidad and Tobago during Williams's premiership. She worked at the Caribbean Commission where Williams had taken up a position. They began a relationship and he initiated divorce proceedings from Ribeiro in January 1950 on a Caribbean Commission trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Ribeiro responded with an injunction restraining him from proceeding with his petition. After dropping the proceedings, in a letter of April 1950 submitted to the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia court, he agreed to abide by its decision and be bound by an order regarding alimony. However, a few months later while on a research holiday in the United States he reinitiated divorce proceedings in Reno, Nevada, known for its quick divorces, due to the fact that Moyou was pregnant with his child. However, Ribeiro obtained an injunction preventing Williams from making any attempt at divorce, on the grounds that he had earlier subjected himself to the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia court. Williams filed formal proceedings for a divorce on 24 November 1950. On 13 December 1950, Williams was ordered to appear in court, most likely because he had filed for a divorce in Reno, even though he had earlier submitted himself to the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia. Even though a lawyer had been assigned to him, he did not appear and on 22 December 1950 he was ordered to be taken into custody by a US Marshal. His lawyer in Reno pointed out that his divorce had been granted, though a search of the court records showed no entry for a final decree. Williams eventually met the six-week residential requirement to obtain a Nevada divorce and on 2 January 1951, he married Moyou in Reno, in a ceremony performed by The Rev. Munroe Warner of First Christian Church. Their daughter, Erica Williams, was born on 12 February 1951, in Reno. After his second marriage, Ribeiro obtained a divorce from him on 20 January 1951, on grounds of desertion. It was made effective on 21 July 1951 and he was ordered to pay a monthly alimony of US$250 for the maintenance of his first wife and two children. On 26 May 1953, Mayou died from Tuberculosis.

Academic contributions
Williams specialised in the study of slavery. Many Western academics focused on his chapter on the abolition of the slave trade, but that is just a small part of his work. In his 1944 book, Capitalism and Slavery, Williams argued that the British government's passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 was motivated primarily by economic concerns rather than by humanitarian ones. Williams also argued that by extension, so was the emancipation of the slaves and the blockade of Africa, and that as industrial capitalism and wage labour began to expand, eliminating the competition from wage-free slavery became economically advantageous.

Williams' impact on that field of study has proved of lasting significance. As Barbara Solow and Stanley Engerman put it in the preface to a compilation of essays on Williams that was based on a commemorative symposium held in Italy in 1984, Williams "defined the study of Caribbean history, and its writing affected the course of Caribbean history.... Scholars may disagree on his ideas, but they remain the starting point of discussion.... Any conference on British capitalism and Caribbean slavery is a conference on Eric Williams."

In an open letter to Solow, Yale Professor of History David Brion Davis refers to Williams' thesis of the declining economic viability of slave labor as "undermined by a vast mountain of empirical evidence and has been repudiated by the world’s leading authorities on New World slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and the British abolition movement". A major work which was written to refute Eric Williams' thesis was Seymour Drescher's Econocide, which argued that when the slave trade was abolished in 1807, Britain's sugar economy was thriving. However, other historians have noted that Drescher ended his study of the economic history of the British West Indies in 1822, and did not address the decline of the British sugar industry (something which was highlighted by Williams) which began in the mid-1820s, and continued until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. The majority of Eric William's thesis, which addressed the decline of the sugar industry in the 1820s, the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, and the sugar equalisation acts of the 1840s, has continued to influence the historiography of the 19th-century West Indies and it's connection to the wider Atlantic world as a whole.

In addition to Capitalism and Slavery, Williams produced a number of other scholarly works focused on the Caribbean. Of particular significance are two published long after he had abandoned his academic career for public life: British Historians and the West Indies and From Columbus to Castro. The former, based on research done in the 1940s and initially presented at a symposium at Clark Atlanta University, sought to challenge established British historiography on the West Indies. Williams was particularly scathing in his criticism of the work of Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle. The latter work is a general history of the Caribbean from the 15th to the mid-20th centuries. The work appeared at the same time as a similarly titled book (De Cristóbal Colón a Fidel Castro) by another Caribbean scholar-statesman, Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic.

Williams sent one of 73 Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages to NASA for the historic first lunar landing in 1969. The message still rests on the lunar surface today. He wrote, in part: "It is our earnest hope for mankind that while we gain the moon, we shall not lose the world."

The Eric Williams Memorial Collection
The Eric Williams Memorial Collection (EWMC) at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago was inaugurated in 1998 by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell. In 1999, it was named to UNESCO's prestigious Memory of the World Register. Secretary Powell heralded Williams as a tireless warrior in the battle against colonialism, and for his many other achievements as a scholar, politician and international statesman.

The Collection consists of the late Dr. Williams' Library and Archives. Available for consultation by researchers, the Collection amply reflects its owner's eclectic interests, comprising some 7,000 volumes, as well as correspondence, speeches, manuscripts, historical writings, research notes, conference documents and a miscellany of reports. The Museum contains a wealth of emotive memorabilia of the period and copies of the seven translations of Williams' major work, Capitalism and Slavery (into Russian, Chinese and Japanese [1968, 2004] among them, and a Korean translation was released in 2006). Photographs depicting various aspects of his life and contribution to the development of Trinidad and Tobago complete this extraordinarily rich archive, as does a three-dimensional re-creation of Williams' study.

Dr Colin Palmer, Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, has said: "as a model for similar archival collections in the Caribbean...I remain very impressed by its breadth.... [It] is a national treasure." Palmer's biography of Williams up to 1970, Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean (University of North Carolina Press, 2008), is dedicated to the Collection.

Film
In 2011, to mark the centenary of Williams' birth, Mariel Brown directed the documentary film Inward Hunger: the Story of Eric Williams, scripted by Alake Pilgrim.

Selected bibliography

 * Capitalism and Slavery, 1944.
 * Documents of West Indian History: 1492–1655 from the Spanish discovery to the British conquest of Jamaica, Volume 1, 1963.
 * History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago, 1964.
 * British Historians and the West Indies, 1964.
 * The Negro In The Caribbean, 1970.
 * Inward Hunger: The Education of a Prime Minister, 1971.
 * From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492–1969, 1971.
 * Forged from the Love of Liberty: Selected Speeches of Dr. Eric Williams, 1981.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Eric Williams


text:
Wikipedia talk:How-to (historical)

Archives

 * 1) 2003 archive

I see absolutely nothing wrong with having practical advice and even, in some contexts and presented the right way, moral exhortation on Wikipedia. Knowledge, which encyclopedias catalog, includes not just declarative knowledge (knowledge "that") but also procedural knowledge (knowledge "how"). Sometimes it can be of great interest to try to codify procedural knowledge in declarative (or imperative) sentences.

The big question is how to formulate such how-tos. (We need a how-to for how-tos.) In keeping with Wikipedia's general interest in being unbiased, we want advice of a sort that is often given by experts, or in guide books. Where different experts would give different advice, the differences should be noted.

This is great! :-) My only nitpick is that personal opinion is actually to be avoided in Wikipedia how-tos; i.e., we would like even how-tos to be written from the neutral point of view.

The point is that it is sometimes not practical or even possible for some how-tos to be neutral, and even when it is, sometimes the personal opinion is just as valuable information as the neutral information. For example, Poker/Equipment expresses the opinion that high-quality cards and chips are worth the price but that "poker tables" generally aren't. That's useful information to someone learning to play poker, so I wouldn't want it excluded. It should be mentioned in the text above, though, that such opinion should be attributed if it is potentially controversial (if even with a wimpy attribution such as "many believe..." or "this author believes..."). --LDC

I agree entirely that what you call "personal opinion"--if it is expert or (where experts per se don't exist) well-justified opinion--is sometimes just as valuable as neutral information. Please note that extremely opinionated stuff can be presented from the neutral point of view.

I would be curious to learn why how-tos sometimes cannot be neutral. There is more than one way to skin a cat, eh? Wouldn't the neutral point of view have us report on all of them? (First, get a cat; firmly grab it by its neck...) --LMS

Question: what about if somebody starts posting howto guides for really nasty illegal stuff? "tax evasion for beginners"? "Ecstasy production in your own backyard"? "photographic techniques for kiddie porn?" I think it's appropriate to have traditional encyclopedia articles on tax evasion, ecstasy, and kiddie porn, but (hypothetically) having howto guides for such topics poses additional moral questions and ones that might better be dealt with by other projects IMHO.

Yeh, I posted a similar question at talk:Wikipedia Cookbook. The answer was honest, if not especially reassuring. :-) --KQ

About How-tos, which ones to include/move to Wikibooks for classrooms, how-to update How-to, see Village_pump --Docu 12:06, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, I don't think we should include how-to articles. The article would be practically the same as WikiHow, an already founded how-to wiki. PseudoOne (talk) 18:00, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

From Village Pump: How-to
(Which How-to articles to include? Where do How-to articles belong?) Moved to Wikipedia talk:How-to
 * "Procedural knowledge or know-how is the knowledge of how to perform some task. Know-how is different from other kinds of knowledge such as propositional knowledge in that it can be directly applied to a task.".

According to How-to:
 * "A HowTo is a simple set of instructions needed to complete a task or build something. Ideally, Wikipedia articles should not be mere sets of instructions, but additionally provide historical context and further information."

Both were written before was created for "developing and disseminating free, open content textbooks and other classroom texts". Not a few of the how-to previously included in Wikipedia have been moved there.

The current situation is less than satisfactory, teachers look at our main page and How-to and suggest to their students to write how-tos for a task, deletionists use a "how-to" argument for anything that has "How-to" in the title.

Should we continue to have how-tos in Wikipedia or not? Should any type of procedural description be excluded? Is it just classroom-projects and IKEA-how-tos that shouldn't be included? -- User:Docu

 * I was a strong supporter of having How to knowledge in wikipedia before wikibooks was started. Now I feel that wikibooks is the best place for this stuff. I propose we move all the how to pages over, we put a notice on VfD saying how to's are not to be listed there, we keep the page how to but tell people not to start new how to pages on wikipedia. The how to page should be used to list existing procedural knowledge that needs to be transwikied. theresa knott 00:42, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Theresa, I agree with your proposal. Kingturtle 00:44, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes - Wikibooks is the best place for How-tos. That type of content is very welcome there. --mav 04:43, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Appropriate how-to's should have a place in Wikipedia. I am beginning to feel this more and more. I agree that "Wikipedia articles should not be mere sets of instructions, but additionally provide historical context and further information." However, I am somewhat bemused by the apparent consensus that instructional articles are not encyclopedic. Given
 * a) the derivation of the word (-paideia, teaching or instruction),
 * b) the historical origins of the Britannica, where "utility" was a chief feature of the mission,
 * c) The lack of any deprecation on the What Wikipedia is Not page,
 * d) The apparent endorsement on the How-to page,
 * I don't think articles should not be excluded merely on the basis of being how-tos.
 * An ideal encyclopedia should contain the elements of a full course of general education. Just because something could go in a textbook doesn't mean it should be excluded from an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is a textbook--a comprehensive textbook, and "instruction" belongs in it as well as "information."
 * Soapbox off. Dpbsmith 16:15, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's any such consensus. I do think that most people don't care which project information ends up in, as long as it is preserved and propagated.  Among the people who care strongly about those divisions, I think the only consensus is that original-research style how-tos do not fit in with the rest of Wikipedia.  However, many of them would accept a suitably "NPOV" how-to; that is, one which addresses all of the different ways to do something, and puts it in context and into perspective. -+sj+ 09:43, 2004 Mar 2 (UTC)

 * Dpbsmith, I agree with you up to a point. However, distinguishing the two types of knowledge does seem useful. Perhaps wikipedia and wikibooks should be renamed, both being wikipedia, but each part being "wikipedia information" and "wikipedia instruction" (or whatever). Or perhaps the names should be accepted as idiom as they are de facto now.
 * Mr. Jones 14:20, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A solution for recipes appears to be that they are to be included (see also Talk:List_of_recipes/Delete, not necessarily with all steps, quantities and variations though). If we leave out the procedural part, they might as well end up in Wiktionary.

In another field, Algorithms on Wikipedia are described in pseudocode to allow to understand how they work. The reading level of most of us seems to need that "instructional part". -- User:Docu

 * Following the various comments also made on the mailing list wikipedia.english, I suggest we add the following to "What_Wikipedia_is_not": "Wikipedia is not excluding content that may also be suitable for textbooks (Wikibooks)". -- User:Docu

Wikipedia is not a guide?
As far as I remember "wikipedia is not a guide", so am I right to guess that how-to and everything in it is content "to be cleaned up sometime and expected not to be expanded further"? I specifically ask because I told a guy that he should not create howtos in article space and he pointed me to this specific article and its contents. I believe this is wikibooks content, and not wikipedia's.--grin ✎ 19:33, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)
 * This seems to support transwiki'ing how-to's Talk:How to breed Siamese Fighting Fish (despite the fact the article still exists)--besides the nominator, six votes to transwiki/delete, with one neutral vote. Why on earth is How to breed Siamese Fighting Fish still here?
 * Probably someone forgot. It is on its way now. -- Egil 17:35, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I think it would be MUCH better if articles transwikied from Wikipedia were NOT deleted, but replaced with interwiki redirs (or possibly interwiki links). It's better for Wikipedia, because there's less chance of the article getting recreated. It's better for Wikibooks (or Wiktionary, or whichever) because it raises the visibility of the sister projects. It's better for the user, because they find the info they're looking for. Niteowlneils 20:02, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Some people dislike how to articles. Some people like them. Opinions differ. As this policy page says, such an article should contain more than simply the instructions. If you dislike a particular topic, ignoring it is easy enough. Jamesday 03:57, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Be cautious and tentative when you tell people such things. You're not exactly wrong but it's not that simple, either. I believe that this is controversial, that there has never been consensus on this point, and that there is no official policy. I asked this question on the mailing list a while ago and several Wikipedians confirmed my impression.
 * In practice, though, articles that consist solely of a cooking recipe tend to get listed on VfD, and what then generally happens is that the recipe ends up being transwikied to Wikibooks. The same thing happens to articles that are very explicitly pure step-by-step directions. (I personally oppose this and regard it as tyranny of the majority, or tyranny of the more persistent, rather than true consensus policy, but there you have it.) If you want to test the waters, it might be interesting to list how-to for deletion and see what happens. Conversely, if someone wants to contribute an article that includes a recipe or a set of directions for something, it is a good idea to present them in a cultural context, proceding from general to specific, with the recipe or directions being presented at the end as a very specific example of whatever is being discussed.
 * Warning, warning, POV alert. Historically, encyclopedias contained a great deal of how-to-like material. Diderot's work was entitled "Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of Science, Arts, and the Trades." The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition contained all sorts of detailed mechanical and circuit diagrams. It did not quite tell you how to build a working transatlantic telegraph, but nearly. Chambers' 1728 work was entitled "Cyclopaedia; or an Universal Dictionary of Art and Sciences, containing an Explication of the Terms and an Account of the Things Signified thereby in the several Arts, Liberal and Mechanical, and the several Sciences, Human and Divine." The very word "encyclopaedia" means "universal course of study," or "textbook of everything." If it's suitable for a textbook, it should be suitable for Wikipedia. That's just my $0.02 and others do disagree. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:30, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the history, Dpbsmith. I am part of the minority faction that believes guides aren't always out of place in an encyclopedia.  I've heard the contrary asserted several times, but never convincingly justified.  What determines the nature of what is "encyclopedic", apart from majority opinion? --Fritzlein 00:43, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * I understand the general issue is under some debate. However, at the moment I am more concerned about the apparent violation of VfD policy/process in this one specific instance. Unanimous vote to transwiki, and yet a generally respected Wikipedian removes the VfD tag and leaves the article on Wikipedia? Why have VfD if the results are outcome is based on the whim of individuals. Niteowlneils 19:56, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Also, I am interested in responses to the broader issue, if articles are transwikied for whatever reason, is it not better to leave a redirect to whatever 'sister project' it went to. Niteowlneils 20:26, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How to Guides generally belong on Wikibooks, because they are not strictly encyclopedic, wikibooks is a collection of books, documentation, and textbooks written by the equivalent of wikipedians. So that is where how to guides belong. — siro χ  o  09:30, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)
 * The fact that Wikibooks uses information originally placed on Wikipedia isn't a justification for deleting that information from Wikipedia. There's no reason to cannibalize when copying will do. - Nunh-huh 23:10, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * The only reason I can think of for keeping how-tos (for now) would be to wait until the software can support moving page history across wikis. (Unless this is now possible and I've missed it.  I don't work on the other Wikimedia projects so I don't know.)  Isomorphic 06:12, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Another reason for keeping them is that they are part of encyclopedias and belong here. As Dpbsmith noted, there's a long tradition of practical instruction in encyclopedias, even though some contributors dislike such things. Jamesday 03:36, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Concur with siroxo. They belong on Wikibooks, not here. Why do you want them in both places? --Improv 03:43, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm happy for things to be in as many places as are useful. This particular place is an encyclopedia and encyclopedias traditionally contain such things. That you dislike them doesn't make them unencyclopedic. If you want to create a text book covering a topic which is also covered in a how to article here, please feel free. Jamesday 03:57, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Hey Jamesday -- I wasn't meaning to be a loose canon, making policy and rewriting it in one go. I thought I had read somewhere that it had been explicitly decided that howtos are not for wikipedia but are for wikibooks, so my rewriting of this page was based on the idea that this page simply had never been updated to agree with that consensus. I'm going to double check on it -- it's late where I am, and I'm about to head to bed, but sometime tomorrow I'll see if I can find the policy I thought I read. If it's there, we should probably reapply my changes, if not, we should definitely keep yours unless said conclusion is strongly implied, and then we'll have a discussion, and I will apologise for my error in thinking it decided. --Improv 07:42, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Vfd debate
For the vfd debate related to this page see Wikipedia talk:How-to/delete -- Graham ☺ | Talk 15:29, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Most of this is now obsolete in light of WP:NOT
Let me make it clear that I personally believe an Encyclopedia should contain how-tos. For about two years I've been trying to resolve the apparent discrepancy between this page and the frequent assertions that how-tos belong in Wikibooks. However, currently WP:NOT is perfectly explicit on this point, point 8:

Wikipedia articles should not include instruction - advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, and recipes. Wikibooks is a Wikipedia sister-project which is better suited for such things.

And that page is "official policy." So Wikipedia articles should not even _contain_ instructions, even in a wider context, according to current policy. Therefore, I gutted the article and stripped out most of the prior contents. (See history if you're interested in, well, the history). Dpbsmith (talk) 14:13, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Per the VfD discussion linked above, this previously had support, so I've added the tag instead. --Interiot 15:56, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Fine with me. But I'm wondering whether the  tag shouldn't go below the note referring to the current policy. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:59, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Try to preview it, the two large boxes look a little weird when they're right next to each other, top-to-bottom. Though the current arrangement isn't necessarily pretty either.  Or you could just be more bold and remove the  .  --Interiot 17:14, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

 * The unified box looks great. --Interiot 19:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

How-tos in Science
Often it is appropriate for Wikipedia to include details of a particular scientific experiment that are of interest. For example, if they are the first of their kind, or if they are commonly performed, or if they are just generally well known. It is important that scientific how-tos explain why they are of interest.

Some questions that you should consider in articles on scientific experiments:

 * Who first performed this experiment? When? Where? With whom?
 * What technical inventions allowed this experiment to be performed?
 * Where and when were the results published? Under what title?
 * What was the scientific reaction to this experiment?
 * What was the public reaction?
 * What theories did this experiment confirm or disprove?
 * How has this experiment been simplified or made redundant by later innovations?
 * What scientific principles were used in the design of this experiment?
 * Is this experiment commonly performed in schools or universities? At what age range is it typically performed?
 * What conclusions can be drawn from the experiment?

title: Wikipedia talk:How-to (historical)