Imagine a bustling port in ancient Carthage, circa 600 BCE, where Phoenician sailors unload fragrant cedarwood from Lebanon, North African potters shape intricate ostrich-egg urns, and Sicilian merchants barter for shimmering Aegean textiles. This was the Punic world—a dazzling crossroads of cultures, united not by conquest but by the restless tides of trade and human connection. For centuries, historians believed the Phoenicians, famed for their alphabet and seafaring prowess, spread their influence through mass migration from the Levant. Yet an ancient DNA study, published in Nature, shatters this assumption, revealing a civilization woven from diverse threads across the Mediterranean. A Genetic Mosaic of the Punic World Researchers from the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean analyzed DNA from 73 individuals buried at 14 archaeological sites, from the Levant to North Africa, Iberia, and islands like Sicily, Sardinia, and Ibiza. Sites like the evocative Punic necropolis of Puig des Molins on Ibiza capture a civilization at its zenith, when Carthage challenged Rome’s rise. The study, detailed in Scientific American, aimed to trace genetic ties between Punic communities and their Phoenician roots in Levantine cities like Tyre. Scholars once pictured waves of Levantine settlers carrying their culture—language, religion, and the world’s first alphabet—westward. But the DNA tells a different story. “We expected a strong Levantine signal,” says lead researcher Harald Ringbauer, “but found surprisingly little genetic contribution from the Phoenician homeland”. Instead, Punic communities were a kaleidoscope of ancestries, with the largest contributions from people akin to modern Sicilians and Aegean islanders, blended with significant North African roots. Map of sites included in the aDNA study (approximately 600 BCE). The numbers indicate the number of human genomes produced from these sites. Credit: Harald Ringbauer In ...
First seen: 2025-05-01 22:37
Last seen: 2025-05-01 22:37