The more obvious answer is, of course, that life in Eastern
Mediterranean occupied territory, in a simple, leisurely, prescientific age, among a small minority having no political power, was very different from the conditions of today.
Soon after, it was
occupied by the Egyptians who controlled Canaan (a historical name for the Levant, which consists of the lands east of the
Mediterranean corresponding with modern day Israel, Palestinian
territories, Lebanon and western Syria) for the next 350 years, until the Philistines (from which the word «Palestine» is derived) captured the area in the 12th century BCE.