Yeah no. As far as I can tell “Canaanite” is not a specific ethnicity, but a label for peoples who lived in Canaan in ancient times. Canaan is another name for the Levant, which is another name for the region that came to be known (after the Roman Conquest, before Israel) as Palestine. Arabs came from Arabia. It is more accurate to say that most of the surviving people of Canaanite genetic extraction were “Arabized” during the Arab Conquests of the 7th century, not the other way around.
According to Biblical accounts, there were seven, separate ancient Canaanite nations, in addition to the Jews, who were also genetically Canaanite: secular scholars once thought these ”Canaanite nations” were fictitious and mythical, until archeological evidence began turning up regarding the formerly-unknown (except in the Bible) Hittite nation. Most scholars now agree there were in fact several different “nations” (ethnic groups) co-existing in the same territory known as Canaan during the late Bronze Age. People back then did not have the concept of the modern nation-state as we do now; instead, there were numerous independent city-states, of various different ethnicities, none of which had exclusive control over the entire territory known as Canaan. In addition, nomadic herding peoples traveled in and out of the region freely, interspersed among the settled cities of the various nations. All of these people could be considered “Canaanites” in the sense that they lived in Canaan.
The Jews are the only indigenous Canaanite people who retain their culture in a continuous, unbroken line from ancient times until today.
Arabs come from Arabia. During the great expansion of Islam (also known as the Arab Conquest) led by Mohammed’s followers in the 7th century C.E., Arab Muslims from Arabia spread out to invade and conquer (in the name of Islam, which was, especially then, both a political system and a religion) most of the Levant, Mesopotamia, North Africa, and so on. The peoples of those places — that is, the non-Arab nations who lived there previously — found their indigenous cultures were suppressed, and they were assimilated into the “Arab (Muslim) nation,” abandoning (for the most part) their native languages, religions, and cultures, and adopting the Arabic language, Muslim religion, and Arab culture instead.
Part (1)
