 A Chalcolithic culture, the Ghassulian economy was a mixed agricultural system consisting of extensive cultivation of grains (wheat and barley), intensive horticulture of vegetable crops, commercial production of vines and olives, and a combination of transhumance and nomadic pastoralism.The Ghassulian culture, according to Juris Zarins, developed out of the earlier Munhata phase of what he calls the ""circum Arabian nomadic pastoral complex"", probably associated with the first appearance of Semites in this area.The urban development of Canaan lagged considerably behind that of Egypt and Mesopotamia and even that of Syria, where from 3,500 BCE a sizable city developed at Hamoukar.