[85] Bliss, in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund for April 1892, figures many interesting objects, found in the lower or Amorite stratum of the mound of Tell-el-Hesy (Lachish). We have here a bronze battle-axe and heads of javelins that may have been used against the soldiers of Joshua, and axes and pottery of equally early date, along with multitudes of flint flakes, arrow heads, &c., used at this early time. It is to be hoped that the further exploration of this site may yield yet more interesting results.
Palestine thus presents a prehistoric past parallel with the earlier years of Egypt. It has, however, a still earlier period, for in Palestine, as stated in a previous chapter, we have evidence of the existence of man long before the dispersion of the sons of Noah. To appreciate this evidence, we must go back, as in the case of Egypt, to the pre-human period. All along the coast of Palestine, from Jaffa to the northern limit of old Phoenicia, the geological traveller sees evidence of a recent submergence, in the occurrence of sandstone, gravel, and limestone with shells and other marine remains of species still living in the Mediterranean. These are the relics of that pleistocene submergence already referred to, in which the Nile valley was an arm of the sea and Africa was an island. No evidence has been found of the residence of man in Palestine in this period, when, as the sea washed the very bases of the hills, and the plains were under water, it was certainly not very well suited to his abode. The climate was also probably more severe than at present, and the glaciers of Lebanon must have extended nearly to the sea. This was the time of the so-called glacial period in Western Europe.
This, however, was succeeded by that post-glacial period in which, as already explained, the area of the Mediterranean was much smaller than at present, and the land encroached far upon the bed of the sea. This, the second continental period, is that in which man makes his first undoubted appearance in Europe, and we have evidence of the same kind in Syria, to which I have already directed attention in the description of the caverns of the Lebanon, in Chapter IV.