Israel had been the road out of Africa for early men over hundreds of thousands of years. It was a land where Homo erectus and then Homo sapiens lived side by side with the Neanderthals. Homo sapiens sapiens later passed through what is today Egypt, the Sinai and Israel, spreading out in all directions to Europe and Asia about one hundred thousand years ago before finally reaching Australia.
The political significance of those finds was enormous, reinforcing an image of the Holy Land as a truly ancient source of humanity, showing that it had been populated by man from the earliest times, a sacred site bequeathed to a wise and ancient people, the Jews, who roots lay in the distant pass, and who were chosen by God as his people.