The Philistines were an ancient people who lived along the southern coast of Canaan during the Iron Age. Their territory was organized into a confederation of city-states known collectively as Philistia. They spoke the Philistine language, which is poorly attested, with debate ongoing among scholars as to whether the Philistines originally spoke an Indo-European language that gradually synthesized with the local Canaanite dialect continuum of the Northwest Semitic languages.