Geographically the Sinai Peninsula forms a bridge between
Africa and Eurasia and the earliest groups of hominids
most probably crossed the peninsula when they left Africa
more than a million years ago. There is evidence that
humans occupied the area at the beginning of the Paleolithic
period, about 250,000 years ago.
The earliest agriculture probably took place about 10,000
B.C. in the Near East and by 6,000 B.C., in the Neolithic
period, agricultural societies were widespread in the
Old World.
Human activity in Sinai intensified from the Iron Age
about 1200 B.C., until the end of the Byzantine period
around the sixth century A.D.
