To
a later period belong the series of Gezer cave dwellings, which,
according to Professor Macalister, the well-known Palestinian
authority, "were occupied by a non-Semitic people of low stature, with
thick skulls and showing evidence of the great muscular strength that
is essential to savage life".[20] These people are generally supposed
to be representatives of the Mediterranean race, which Sergi has found
to have been widely distributed throughout Syria and a part of Asia
Minor.[21] An interesting problem, however, is raised by the fact
that, in one of the caves, there are evidences that the dead were
cremated. This was not a Mediterranean custom, nor does it appear to
have prevailed outside the Gezer area. If, however, it does not
indicate that the kinsmen of the Ancient Egyptians came into contact
with the remnants of an earlier people, it may be that the dead of a
later people were burned there. The possibility that unidentified
types may have contributed to the Semitic blend, however, remains. The
Mediterraneans mingled in Northern Syria and Asia Minor with the
broad-headed Armenoid peoples who are represented in Europe by the
Alpine race. With them they ultimately formed the great Hittite
confederacy. These Armenoids were moving southwards at the very dawn
of Egyptian history, and nothing is known of their conquests and
settlements. Their pioneers, who were probably traders, appear to have
begun to enter the Delta region before the close of the Late Stone
Age.[22] The earliest outpourings of migrating Arabians may have been
in progress about the same time. This early southward drift of
Armenoids might account for the presence in southern Palestine, early
in the Copper Age, of the tall race referred to in the Bible as the
Rephaim or Anakim, "whose power was broken only by the Hebrew
invaders".[23] Joshua drove them out of Hebron,[24] in the
neighbourhood of which Abraham had purchased a burial cave from
Ephron, the Hittite.[25] Apparently a system of land laws prevailed in
Palestine at this early period. It is of special interest for us to
note that in Abraham's day and afterwards, the landed proprietors in
the country of the Rephaim were identified with the aliens from Asia
Minor--the tall variety in the Hittite confederacy.

Little doubt need remain that the Arabians during their sojourn in
Palestine and Syria met with distinctive types, and if not with pure
Armenoids, at any rate with peoples having Armenoid