PUNIC WATCH, UPDATE:
Who Were the Carthaginians? Ancient DNA Study Reveals a Stunning Answer Carthage and its empire were established by Phoenicians, but new research finds that the archenemies of Rome had little genetic link to their Levantine founders (Ariel David, Haaretz).
Now, a team of researchers has extracted the DNA of scores of people buried in ancient Punic settlements across the western and central Mediterranean, including Carthage itself, and has made a startling discovery.
... Instead, it seems the Punic people were exceptionally diverse, and derived most of their ancestry from a genetic profile similar to that of ancient people from Sicily and Greece. The second major ancestry component came from local North African populations and steadily grew as Carthage's political importance rose, the researchers report.
The finding is unexpected because, throughout the centuries, the Carthaginians maintained clear cultural links to their Levantine roots, speaking a semitic language, using the Phoenician alphabet and worshipping the Canaanite gods of their founders.
I have mentioned this story already
here when the underlying article was at the prepublication stafe. I comment there on why the result is not all that surprising.
Now the article has been published the journal Nature. And, as usual for the Haaretz archaeological reporters, Ariel David provides useful background and commentary. The article:
Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestors
Harald Ringbauer, Ayelet Salman-Minkov, Dalit Regev, Iñigo Olalde, Tomer Peled, Luca Sineo, Gioacchino Falsone, Peter van Dommelen, Alissa Mittnik, Iosif Lazaridis, Davide Pettener, Maria Bofill, Ana Mezquida, Benjamà Costa, Helena Jiménez, Patricia Smith, Stefania Vai, Alessandra Modi, Arie Shaus, Kim Callan, Elizabeth Curtis, Aisling Kearns, Ann Marie Lawson, Matthew Mah, …David Reich
Nature (2025)
Abstract
The maritime Phoenician civilization from the Levant transformed the entire Mediterranean during the first millennium BCE1,2,3. However, the extent of human movement between the Levantine Phoenician homeland and Phoenician–Punic settlements in the central and western Mediterranean has been unclear in the absence of comprehensive ancient DNA studies. Here, we generated genome-wide data for 210 individuals, including 196 from 14 sites traditionally identified as Phoenician and Punic in the Levant, North Africa, Iberia, Sicily, Sardinia and Ibiza, and an early Iron Age individual from Algeria. Levantine Phoenicians made little genetic contribution to Punic settlements in the central and western Mediterranean between the sixth and second centuries BCE, despite abundant archaeological evidence of cultural, historical, linguistic and religious links4. Instead, these inheritors of Levantine Phoenician culture derived most of their ancestry from a genetic profile similar to that of Sicily and the Aegean. Much of the remaining ancestry originated from North Africa, reflecting the growing influence of Carthage5. However, this was a minority contributor of ancestry in all of the sampled sites, including in Carthage itself. Different Punic sites across the central and western Mediterranean show similar patterns of high genetic diversity. We also detect genetic relationships across the Mediterranean, reflecting shared demographic processes that shaped the Punic world.
The Haaretz article does flag one result that I do find surprising:
The later and secondary addition of North African ancestry likely has to do with the rise to prominence of Carthage as the capital of the Punic empire, the researchers note. But what is unusual is that this "radical mix" occurred pretty homogenously across the empire: it's not that the Phoenicians in Sicily mixed with the local Sicilians and Greeks, while the ones in Tunisia intermarried with Africans. The genetic analysis shows that this population churn was constant and spread all over the empire. This is likely connected to the great mobility of the Carthaginians who created a "Mediterranean highway" of maritime trade, Ringbauer says.
I would have expected the genetic diversity to be more tied to the local populations in the individual colonies.
At this post is a reminder why PaleoJudaica posts so frequently on Phoenician and Punic (Carthaginian) language and society.
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