Ancient DNA challenges long-held assumptions about the Mediterranean Phoenician-Punic civilization

The Phoenicians were a confederation of maritime merchants that emerged from the chaos of the Levant about 3100 years ago and developed the largest commercial network of antiquity. Despite their contributions —which included shipbuilding, navigation, urban planning and, perhaps most significant, an alphabet—, literature is not preserved and many written records are preserved, except for funeral inscriptions. The most powerful and prosperous of t…

New Evidence of Phoenician Origins Emerges - Archaeology Magazine

LEIPZIG, GERMANY—Until now, archaeologists attempting to trace the genetic lineage of the Phoenicians have had a difficult time. These seafaring people who dominated trade in the Mediterranean during the first millennium B.C. have always been thought to have come from the Levant, but for centuries they cremated their dead, leaving nothing behind for scientists to test. However, Phoenician burial customs changed in the seventh century B.C. when t…

Ancient DNA Reveals Phoenicians’ Surprising Ancestry

Phoenician civilization spread its culture and alphabet across the Mediterranean but not, evidently, its DNA

Phoenician culture spread mainly through cultural exchange

Ancient DNA analysis challenges our understanding of the ancient Phoenician-Punic civilization. An international team of researchers analyzing genome-wide data from 210 ancient individuals has found that Levantine Phoenician towns contributed little genetically to Punic populations in the central and western Mediterranean despite their deep cultural, economic, and linguistic connections.

An analysis of ancient genes confuses our conceptions of antiquity in the Mediterranean region. The bearers of Punic culture mostly came from Greece and Sicily, not from the Levant.

An unprecedented study of ancient genetics has just shed light on one of the greatest enigmas in Western history: the identity of Phoenician civilization, the first to expand through the Mediterranean more than 3,000 years ago and reach the Atlantic.