We have all studied the Phoenicians at school, but do we really remember the importance of this Mediterranean civilization? In this post you will be able to learn about seven mysteries that surround the ancient Phoenician people, responsible for the origin of our alphabet and the development of commerce.
Phoenicians. 7 mysteries about this lost town
1- As we said, the Phoenicians were key in the birth of our current alphabet. Initially, they borrowed the writing systems of the Mesopotamians and Egyptians. However, their sense of practicality led them to replace these cuneiform and ideographic symbols with a new alphabet of 22 letters that represented the sounds that the human voice was capable of emitting. Thanks to the Phoenician merchants, this alphabet was able to spread and was adopted by the Greeks, although they made some transformations. Some variants emerged from the Greek alphabet, among them Etruscan, which was the origin of the Roman or Latin alphabetcurrently known as the alphabet and used in much of the world.
2- The Greeks nicknamed the Phoenicians as ««the men in purple», since this very expensive dye appeared for the first time in the Phoenician city of Tyre. The Phoenicians introduced the purple textile industry to Carthage, which in turn spread to Rome. This color became the symbol of high social status.
3- But not all historical data about the Phoenicians are so virtuous. The enemies of the Phoenician people transmitted legends about these They practiced human sacrifices with babies. And, indeed, graves of cremated children have been found in Tunisia, Sardinia and Sicily. Opinions are different on this topic. Some archaeologists believe that they are tombs of children who died shortly after birth, while many others argue that there is ample evidence to affirm that they come from sacrifices in search of divine favor.
4- If the Phoenicians are known for something, it is for having been great explorers. The Phoenicians came from what is now Lebanon, although they quickly spread their influence. As merchants and colonizers, they sailed the Mediterranean and founded colonies in present-day Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, the Balearic Islands, etc. Besides, They entered the Atlantic along the European coast until they reached the British Isles and skirted the coasts of Africa to Senegal., founding colonies, factories and industries. Cádiz and Carthage are some of the most important cities founded by the Phoenicians.
5- It has been said that the Phoenicians even reached the Azores. In 2010, the Portuguese Archaeological Research Association reported finding mysterious stone carvings on the island of Terciera that came from the Phoenicians. Two years later, a commission declared that these were natural rock formations, although not everyone agrees.
6- It is estimated that Gadir (present-day Cádiz) was founded by Phoenician settlers from Tire in the year 1100 BC, which would make it, according to experts, the oldest city in Europe. During the excavation of a comedy theater in the city, two skeletons were discovered whose DNA was analyzed. One of them had haplotypes HVOa1 and U1A, both of Middle Eastern origin, while the other had the HV1 haplotype in the maternal DNA line, common in Western Europe, so it is assumed that his mother was native to the Iberian Peninsula.
7- Following this same line, and with the desire to know more about the Phoenicians, last year the DNA of a 2,500-year-old Phoenician, found in Carthage, and nicknamed «theYoung man from Byrsa» or «Ariche». The analysis showed that this man had European ancestry: “U5b2c1 is one of the oldest haplogroups in Europe and is associated with the hunter-gatherer populations that were there.”explained Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith. This group was found in the remains of two hunter-gatherers from a site in northeastern Spain.
Today, only 1% of European people have this haplogroup, probably because the eastern farmers who spread across the continent caused the foragers to leave. «While a wave of agricultural peoples from the Near East replaced these hunter-gatherers, some of their lineages may have persisted longer in the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula and on the islands, eventually reaching the melting pot of Carthage in northern Spain. Africa, through Phoenician trade networks«explained Matisso-Smithm, who concluded: «Interestingly, the analysis showed that Ariche’s mitochondrial DNA most closely resembles that of a modern Portuguese«.