More than 200 our bodies reveal that the Carthaginians weren’t Phoenicians | Science | EUROtoday

An unprecedented previous genetics examine has simply clarified one of many best enigmas within the historical past of the West: the identification of the Phoenician civilization, the primary that expanded via the Mediterranean greater than 3,000 years in the past and reached the Atlantic.

The historical past of this city of navigators retailers was nearly utterly wrote their enemies, the Greeks and the Romans, who coined the Phoenician and Punic names, respectively, and painted them from traitors, murderers and scammers. It was the Romans who, after three wars in opposition to the Carthaginian generals – amongst them the legendary Aníbal who crossed the Alps with elephants to besieged Rome – managed to destroy the good phenicia metropolis, Carthage, within the present Tunisia, in 146 earlier than our period. Although the Phoenicians invented one of many first alphabets, there are hardly any texts, as a result of they wrote in papyri that haven’t been preserved. Even at this time, connections between Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and their tradition and civilization, Punic, should not clear.

Now, the examine of DNA extracted from 210 our bodies from about 2,500 years in the past present in 12 Punic cemeteries in Cádiz, Malaga, Almería, Ibiza, Sardinia or Tunisia, has allowed to make clear that the inhabitants of those colonies had no kinship with the unique Phoenicians of the Middle East, though they did retain their language, tradition, faith and lifestyle based mostly on agriculture. It is probably the primary instance of cultural globalization, the authors of the examine level out, which is printed this Wednesday in Nature, Reference for the very best world science.

The outcomes of the work present that the Punics of the colonies of the Western and Central Mediterranean didn’t retain any genetic kinship with these of the unique cities-states of the Middle East, reminiscent of Tire and Sidon, in Lebanon. Most of them have been descendants of crosses between native populations with folks from North Africa, and in addition from Sicily and Greece. These knowledge assist that the Phoenician tradition didn’t broaden via mass migration, however by cultural transmission and assimilation.

“The Carthaginian world is the first known globalization, which reaches two continents, Europe and Africa,” summarizes the geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox, director of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, ​​which is without doubt one of the principal authors of the examine. In all of the analyzed Punic deposits, together with the Spaniards, there may be an nearly complete genetic disconnection with the origins of the Middle East, though tradition and lifestyle proceed to be maintained, which was embraced by native populations in a primary rehearsal of cosmopolitism. The geneticist highlights the instance of Baria (in Villaricos, Almería), the place the DNA of a number of corpses exhibits that it was a colony of Griegos with a excessive stage of endogamy. “It is a Greek community that lives in a Punic city.” In one of many tombs a embellished ostrich egg was discovered, which exhibits the North African connection of the Punics of the Iberian Peninsula.

David Reich, a geneticist from Harvard University (United States) and principal co -author of the examine, impacts the big number of origins that characterizes every of the colonies analyzed. “In each site we see people with a huge variety of origins,” he explains in a press launch. “A good part of the genetic inheritance is similar to that of the current inhabitants of Sicily and the Aegean, and also to those in North Africa.” Despite the particularities of every settlement, the examine reveals kinship ties among the many inhabitants of a few of these colonies, reminiscent of two second cousins ​​that lived on the banks of the Mediterranean, one in Carthage and one in Sicily, greater than 200 kilometers.

The new examine multiplies by 10 the accessible genetic knowledge of the Punic world. Seventy researchers from six international locations signal the work, which has been taking 5 years. The Mediterranean is just not a very good area to maintain the genetic materials of hundreds of years in the past. In addition, a few of the mortal stays analyzed have spent a century in museum archives such because the National Archaeological, in Madrid. And but, it has been potential to collect all these knowledge, which permit “giving voice” to a civilization from which there have been no direct testimonies.

Patxi Pérez-Ramallo, researcher on the Bioarcheology Group of the Free University of Brussels, who has not participated within the work, highlights its significance. “The sample used is surprising, and the results, shocking,” he says. “Unlike the next Roman Empire, we do not need so nicely documented Phoenician growth. And this examine contradicts earlier archaeological and historic hypotheses that counsel mass migrations. What it says is that there was primarily a cultural migration. Rome ended The Middle East, however of populations of the central and western Mediterranean. The work “now opens many issues for archaeologists and historians.” “From knowing what it really meant being Phoenician or Punic, how they defined these cultures their identity, and how the initial colonies of the Phoenicians really worked,” he provides.