Top image: Modern reconstruction of Punic Carthage. The circular harbor at the front is the Cothon, the military port of Carthage, where all of Carthage's warships were anchored.

The Phoenician culture emerged in the Bronze Age city-states of the Levant, developing prominent innovations such as the first alphabet (from which many present-day writing systems derive). By the early first millennium BC, Phoenician cities had established a vast maritime network of trading posts as far as Iberia, spreading their culture, religion, and language throughout the central and western Mediterranean.

By the sixth century BC, Carthage, a Phoenician coastal colony in what is now Tunisia, had risen to dominate this region. These culturally Phoenician communities associated with or ruled by Carthage became known as "Punic" by the Romans. The Carthaginian empire left its mark in history, particularly well-known for the three large-scale "Punic Wars" with the rising Roman Republic, including the Carthaginian general Hannibal's surprise campaign to cross the Alps.

Within the framework of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, co-directed by Johannes Krause, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and Michael McCormick of Harvard University, an international team of researchers has now presented a study on the genetic history of these ancient Mediterranean civilizations.

The work is published in the journal  Nature.

New Perspective On the Spread of Phoenician Culture

The new study aimed to use ancient DNA to characterize Punic people's ancestry and look for genetic links between them and Levantine Phoenicians, with whom they share a common culture and language. This was made possible by sequencing and analyzing a large sample of genomes from human remains buried in 14 Phoenician and Punic archaeological sites spanning the Levant, North Africa, Iberia, and the Mediterranean islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Ibiza.

Map of Phoenician and Punic regions, showing where genetic samples were acquired.

The researchers revealed an unexpected result. "We find surprisingly little direct genetic contribution from Levantine Phoenicians to western and central Mediterranean Punic populations," says lead author Harald Ringbauer, who was a post-doctoral scientist at Harvard University when he began this research, and is now a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

"This provides a new perspective on how Phoenician culture spread—not through large-scale mass migration, but through a dynamic process of cultural transmission and assimilation."

The study highlights that Punic sites were home to people with vastly different ancestry profiles. "We observe a genetic profile in the Punic world that was extraordinarily heterogeneous," says David Reich, a professor of Genetics and Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University who co-led the work.

"At each site, people were highly variable in their ancestry, with the largest genetic source being people similar to contemporary people of Sicily and the Aegean, and many people with significant North African-associated ancestry as well."

Ancient DNA Reveals Cosmopolitan Nature of Punic Society

The results underscore the Punic world's cosmopolitan nature. Individuals with North African ancestry lived next to and intermingled with a majority of people of mainly Sicilian-Aegean ancestry in all sampled Punic sites, including Carthage. Moreover, genetic networks across the Mediterranean suggest that shared demographic processes—such as trade, intermarriage, and population mixing—played a critical role in shaping these communities.

The researchers even found a pair of close relatives (ca. second cousins) bridging the Mediterranean, one buried in a North African Punic site and one in Sicily.

"These findings reinforce the idea that ancient Mediterranean societies were deeply interconnected, with people moving and mixing across often large geographic distances," says Ilan Gronau, a professor of Computer Science at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, who co-led the work.

The archaeological site of Carthage.

He adds, "Such studies highlight the power of ancient DNA in its ability to shed light on the ancestry and mobility of historical populations for which we have relatively sparse direct historical records."

The Phoenicians Dominated the Ancient Mediterranean Region

The Phoenicians, flourishing between 1500 and 300 BC, were a maritime powerhouse whose influence stretched across the ancient Mediterranean world. Originating from the coastal regions of what is now Lebanon, they established a network of city-states like Tyre and Sidon that became hubs of trade, innovation, and cultural exchange.

At the heart of Phoenician prosperity lay their mastery of seafaring. Their advanced shipbuilding techniques, including the construction of sturdy vessels such as the galley and the bireme, allowed them to navigate the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean with ease. This maritime expertise facilitated extensive trade routes, connecting Phoenician ports with distant lands as far as Spain, North Africa, and even Britain. Through these trade networks, the Phoenicians exchanged goods such as textiles, pottery, metals, and luxury items like ivory, spices, and precious metals.

Furthermore, the Phoenicians were renowned for their craftsmanship, particularly in the production of purple dye extracted from the murex shellfish. This prized dye, known as "Tyrian purple," was highly sought after by royalty and nobility throughout the ancient world, symbolizing wealth and status.

Phoenician ship carved on the side of a second-century sarcophagus and a model of the same type of Phoenician ship at the National Maritime Museum in Haifa, Israel.

Another enduring legacy of the Phoenicians is their contribution to the development of the alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet, consisting primarily of consonantal characters, served as the precursor to numerous writing systems, including Greek, Latin, and ultimately the modern Western alphabet.

In essence, the Phoenicians were pioneers of maritime trade, skilled artisans, and trailblazers in the realm of writing. Their legacy resonates in the cultural, economic, and linguistic landscape of the Mediterranean and beyond, and despite the disappearance of their culture more than 2,000 year ago their influence is still being felt today.

This article is an edited version of a press release from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, entitled ‘Phoenician Culture Spread Mainly Through Cultural Exchange.’