The neolithic inhabitants of Canaan, whose implements of worked and polished stone mark a great advance upon the rough flints of their remote predecessors, belonged to the short, dark-skinned race which spread itself over the shores of the Mediterranean. Dwelling in rude huts, they employed for household use rough vessels of kneaded clay which they fashioned by hand and baked in the fire. They lived chiefly by the cattle and flocks they had domesticated, and, to judge by their clay spindle-whorls, they practised a simple form of weaving, and began to clothe themselves with cloth in place of skins. Over these primitive inhabitants a fresh tide of migration swept, probably in the early part of the third millennium B.C. The new-comers were Semites from Arabia, of the same stock as those nomadic hordes who had already overrun Babylonia and had established themselves in a great part of that country. After they had settled in Canaan and Syria they were known to the Babylonians as the Amurru or Amorites. They were taller and more vigorous than the neolithic Canaanites, and they seem to have brought with them a knowledge of the use of metal, acquired probably by traffic with southern Babylonia.[6] The flint arrows and knives of their enemies would have had little chance against weapons of copper and bronze. But, whether helped by their superior armament or not, they became the dominant race in Canaan. By intermarrying with their predecessors they produced the Canaanites of history, a people of Semitic speech, but with a varying admixture in their blood of the dark-skinned Mediterranean race of lower type.