Phoenician culture spread mainly through cultural exchange
18 comments
·May 5, 2025ants_everywhere
tbrownaw
I'd suspect less "euphemism" and more "jargon". It's probably relatively hard to identify whether the culture was carried by means we currently think positively vs negatively about, so it's useful to have a word that doesn't rely on having a way to measure that distinction.
fdb345
of course it is. port cities and settlements shared slaves not love stories.
gostsamo
The Aegean and Sicily were full of greeks and we would've heard if the phoenicians were trying to build an empire there. Instead, we know that phoenicians were name after the purple dye they were selling. What's more, according to legend, Carthage was established after the Levant was conquered by the assyrians.
thaumasiotes
> The Aegean and Sicily were full of greeks and we would've heard if the phoenicians were trying to build an empire there.
We did hear about it. They did build an empire on Sicily. Sicily was a major territory of Carthage.
elevaet
> 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.
This is from over 2500 years ago. How amazing is that, that we have this capacity in DNA analysis now to discover details like this from so long ago?
ahazred8ta
In the 1700s a ring was found in England, inscribed Silvianus with the name Senicianus scratched into it. In the 1800s a curse tablet was found 80 miles away, complaining that Senicianus stole the ring of Silvianus.
GolfPopper
There are three different extant clay tablets from Ur (circa 1750 BCE) complaining about the wares of the copper merchant Ea-nāṣir.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81...
numbsafari
Ah, my precious…
0xDEAFBEAD
My vague impression is that the Phoenicians may have been just as important, historically, as the Greeks (first alphabet seems like a huge deal!), but they just didn't leave behind as many records. I remember trying to find a good book on them without succeeding. I wonder if Carthage had beaten Rome, the Phoenicians would take away the "ancient Mediterranean genius" slot away from the Greeks, since the availability of historical materials would be reversed.
beloch
Ever wonder why Spain was a civilized province while Gaul and Germany remained hostile frontiers for the Roman republic? Just take a look at the map in this article. Spain originally belonged to Carthage. Large parts of Rome's empire were civilized, not by Rome, but by Carthage and the Phoenicians.
I think you're right that the Phoenicians deserve more credit, as does Carthage. There is yet hope more of their history may come to light. We're unlikely to uncover records on the organic media the Phoenician alphabet was tailored for, but Mesopotamian cultures were contemporaries of the Phoenicians and we're discovering/translating new cuneiform tablets all the time. Entire Mesopotamian cities remain to be discovered, and some significant ones that we know of are likely buried beneath modern settlements.
We may never get the Phonecian's story from their own perspective, but we may yet get a better picture of them from people who didn't have a vested interest in erasing their history.
thaumasiotes
We have a lot of documents from Ugarit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugarit
This is mostly a matter of excavating the tells we can see with our eyes. The history is easy to discover, but there's very little interest, so it doesn't get done.
Note that the initial wave of archaeology in Mesopotamia was fueled by popular interest in the Bible. That sputtered out when archaeology turned out not to support most of what the Bible said. So now there isn't interest from people who'd like to see the Bible confirmed, and there also isn't interest from the general public who have no particular connection to the region.
ohadpr
Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” is coming out in the next few weeks…
Lirael
It’s fascinating to see how culture spreads without mass migration. It challenges the assumption that gene flow equals cultural influence. The way the Phoenicians built identity through connection rather than colonization reminds me of how communication today happens through networks rather than borders. How many other ancient empires were actually cultural ecosystems?
tbrownaw
> challenges the assumption that gene flow equals cultural influence
Have you perhaps heard of anime? Or seen how widespread men's suits are? Or looked up how much images of Jesus and Mary (the ones from the Christian religion) vary across the world?
fdb345
Its just trade. It really is that simple.
curtisszmania
[dead]
fdb345
Jewish research finds more evidence of dIvErSiTy!
> “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.”
> “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.”
They say "cultural exchange" but is this a euphemism that includes things like warfare and slavery? Like the way Alexander the Great spread Greek culture?
It seems like the main hypothesis they're ruling out is migration.