As of late, fascinating new research has shed light on the ancestry of the ancient Phoenicians. This extraordinary civilization arose more than 3,000 years ago in the territory that we today know as Lebanon. This new study, driven by population geneticist Harald Ringbauer and his team, compared DNA from roughly 200 people found at various Phoenician archaeological sites. These discoveries offer a fascinating glimpse into the cultural integration and assimilation of the Phoenician civilization.
The Phoenician civilization was known for its influential culture that spread across the Mediterranean, leaving a lasting impact on language, religion, and trade. The Phoenician city-states, which flourished through maritime commerce, shared languages documented with an alphabet that served as a precursor to both Greek and Latin scripts. Their religious practices did something else that unified these city-states — it made them all culturally similar and close-knit.
Cultural Integration and Assimilation
At the same time Phoenicians were famous for their talent of fitting in and absorbing everything around them. “The Phoenicians were a culture of integration and assimilation,” noted researcher Pierre Zalloua. This flexibility allowed them to thrive as one of the Mediterranean’s most dominant cultural influences. We can see this most clearly with their most famous city-state, Carthage located in what is today Tunisia.
Carthage would remain a center of Phoenician culture until its destruction in 146 BC during the Third Punic War. Even after such colossal urban blunders, the archaeological legacy of this once-great city continues to yield priceless archaeological knowledge. Earlier this year, archaeologists found the gold death mask, which dates back to the third or second century BC.
Insights from Ancient DNA
In their recent study, Ringbauer and his co-authors found compelling genetic ties between individuals buried at widely separated archaeological locations. They traced living relatives, even finding a pair of likely second cousins from North Africa and Sicily. This genetic evidence points to an intricate tangle of vectors enabled by trade on the so-called “Mediterranean highway.”
The genomes of the Punic people from Carthage, in particular, are exceptional. They are pretty much different in genomes from other local populations, such as those of Sardinia and Ibiza. Rather than a European ancestry, they showed an ancestry profile more in line with people who lived in Greece and Sicily thousands of years ago.
“How can there be such a disconnect?” – Harald Ringbauer
The Punic people probably had no Middle Eastern ancestry at all. This lack of representation indicates that people of this heritage were cut off from the Mediterranean highway once Phoenician city-states fell to decline. This constant, enriching exchange of culture and ideas between these diverse yet connected communities laid the foundation for modern Mediterranean society.
Legacy of the Phoenicians
Though they would eventually suffer their own decline, Phoenician culture had an outsized impact on many other Mediterranean cultures. Instead of adhering strictly to their own practices, the Phoenicians’ integration fostered a broader cultural legacy that shaped the region’s history. Their innovations in commercial trade, alphabetic writing, and monotheism echo across millennia.
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