period before the arrival of the Semites, is not clear.
Art took a long stride forward when metal became available. Seals, jewelry articles and copper utensils from this period abound and manifest improved artistic quality. Sculpture flourished; mural paintings begin to appear. But it was ceramic decoration which continued to provide the artist with the best opportunity for the exercise of his talent. By the end of the fourth millennium the technique of glaze painting had reached early Minoan Crete and early dynastic Egypt from northern Syria. In a North Syria mound there has been found a hoard of cast copper statuettes, including a god and a goddess of fertility, the earliest known representation of the human form in metal.
The development of metallurgy and ceramics, which featured the late Chalcolithic and the early Copper Ages, gave rise to different trades, increased business relations between villages and towns and resulted in a higher degree of specialization in labour. Populous towns flourished in plains and valleys and in hitherto uninhabitable places. Trade began to assume international proportions. Expansion of commercial and cultural contacts between Syria, on the one hand, and Egypt and Babylonia, on the other, was a factor of primary significance for the further development of all these lands.
Only one great invention was lacking: writing. The first inscribed documents thus far discovered come from Sumer and date from about 3500 B.C. From lower Mesopotamia the art spread into northern Syria. It became well advanced in the early third millennium. With it and with the simultaneous arrival of the Semites, the historic period begins.
