Ancient Lebanon
There was no country called Lebanon before 1920. In ancient times “Lebanon” was the name of the mountain; the land was shared by city-states and ruled in turn by the empires around it. Each step below names who lived here and what form the land took.
Long before Christianity, the land of Lebanon was home to some of the oldest humans outside Africa, the first villages and the cities that gave the world the alphabet.
Everyone who lived here
Early humans
Over 1 million years ago
Hand-axes at Ras Beirut and Joub Jannine; the Levant was their road out of Africa.
Neanderthals
About 250,000–50,000 years ago
Stone tools in the caves of Adlun and Ksar Akil; burials in the caves of the region.
Early modern humans
From about 120,000 years ago
At Ksar Akil, Egbert and Ethelruda — among the oldest modern humans of western Asia.
Natufians
About 13,000–9,500 BC
The first villages and the harvest of wild grain, just before farming.
First farmers
From about 9500 BC
Wheat, barley, goats and sheep; the first houses of Byblos.
Canaanites
From about 3000 BC
The cities of Byblos, Sidon, Tyre and Beirut — and over 90% of the ancestry of today's Lebanese.
Amorites
About 2000–1600 BC
Dynasties across the Levant; they mixed into the Canaanite cities.
Egyptians
Trade from about 3000 BC; rule about 1550–1150 BC
Partners of Byblos for cedar; later overlords with a governor at Kumidi in the Bekaa.
Hurrians and Mitanni
About 1500–1350 BC
A northern kingdom competing with Egypt for Syria.
Hittites
About 1350–1180 BC
An Anatolian empire that fought Egypt at Kadesh (1274 BC).
Sea Peoples and Philistines
From about 1200 BC
Raiders of the coast; the Philistines settled around Gaza.
Arameans
From about 1100 BC
Kingdoms inland, with Damascus their centre; their Aramaic became the region's common language — the language of Jesus.
Israelites and Judeans
From about 1100 BC
Kingdoms to the south; Tyre's king Hiram helped build Solomon's temple.
Phoenicians
About 1100–64 BC (and beyond)
The Canaanites of the coast under the Greek name: the alphabet, Carthage, purple dye and the sea.
Assyrians
740–612 BC
Tribute and campaigns; Sidon destroyed in 677 BC.
Babylonians
605–539 BC
Nebuchadnezzar's thirteen-year siege of Tyre.
Persians
539–332 BC
Rule through local kings; the Phoenician cities sailed as Persia's navy.
Macedonians and Greeks
332–64 BC
Alexander, then the Ptolemies and Seleucids; Greek language and cities.
Ituraeans
About 200–20 BC
An Arab people ruling the Bekaa and Mount Lebanon from Chalcis.
Nabataeans
From about 300 BC
Arab traders of Petra, whose realm at times reached Damascus.
Romans
From 64 BC
The colony of Berytus, the temples of Baalbek, roads and law.
The same people, five thousand years on
Empires came and went — Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans — but the people stayed. In 2017 geneticists read the DNA of five Canaanites buried at Sidon about 3,700 years ago and compared it with 99 Lebanese of today. Over 90% of present-day Lebanese ancestry comes from that Canaanite population; the rest arrived from Eurasia in the last three thousand years.
What can actually be counted
The story continues
From the first Christians of Tyre and Sidon to today, and a plan for 2050.
Jesus to 2050