The first cities in the southern Levant arise during this period from 3500 to 2000 BCE.

These "proto-Canaanites" are in regular contact with the other peoples to their south such as Egypt, and to the north Asia Minor (Hurrians, Hittites, Luwians) and Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Assyria), a trend that continues through the Iron Age.

The end of the period is marked by the abandonment of the cities and a return to lifestyles based on farming villages and semi-nomadic herding, although specialized craft production continues and trade routes remaine open.

Urbanism returns and the region is divided among small city-states, the most important of which seems to have been Hazor.

Many aspects of Semitic Canaanite material culture now reflect a Mesopotamian influence, and the entire region becomes more tightly integrated into a vast international trading network.

It is during this period too that Canaanites invade the eastern Delta of Egypt, where, known as the Hyksos, they become the dominant power.

In Egyptian inscriptions Amar and Amurru are applied strictly to the more northerly mountain region east of Phoenicia, extending to the Orontes.

In the Akkadian Empire, as early as Naram-Sin's reign (ca.

2240 BCE), Amurru wis called one of the "four quarters" surrounding Sumer, along with Subartu/Assyria, Akkad, and Elam.

Amorite dynasties also come to dominate in much of Mesopotamia, including in Larsa, Isin and founding the state of Babylon in 1894 BCE.

Later on, Amurru becomes the Assyrian/Akkadian term for the interior of south as well as for northerly Canaan.

At this time the Canaanite area seems divided between two confederacies, one centered upon Tel Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley, the second on the more northerly city of Kadesh on the Orontes River.

One Amorite king of Babylonia, Hammurabi (1792- 1750 BCE) founds the first Babylonian Empire, which lasts only as long as his lifetime.

Upon his death, the Amorites are driven from Assyria, but remain masters of Babylonia until 1595 BCE, when they are ejected by the Hittites.During the 2nd millennium BCE, Ancient Egyptian texts use the term Canaan to refer to an Egyptian-ruled colony, whose boundaries generally corroborate the definition of Canaan found in the Hebrew Bible, bounded to the west by the Mediterranean Sea, to the north in the vicinity of Hamath in Syria, to the east by the Jordan Valley, and to the south by a line extended from the Dead Sea to around Gaza.

Nevertheless, the Egyptian and Hebrew uses of the term are not identical: the Egyptian texts also identify the coastal city of Qadesh in north west Syria near Turkey as part of the "Land of Canaan", so that the Egyptian usage seems to refer to the entire levantine coast of the Mediterranean Sea, making it a synonym of another Egyptian term for this coastland, Retenu.There is uncertainty about whether the name Canaan refers to a specific Semitic ethnic group wherever they live, the homeland of this ethnic group, or a region under the control of this ethnic group, or perhaps any of the three.