As an alternative to both the military conquest and uncontested infiltration hypotheses, George Mendenhall and Norman Gottwald suggested that the Israelites emerged through a kind of peasant revolt against their Canaanite lords. However, as explained by Gary A. Rendsburg, archaeological findings (presented by Israel Finkelstein in 1986) undermined this idea because the Israelites' first settled areas were not held by Canaanites, whose cities were sustained alongside Israelite areas.[1]