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> “This provides a new perspective on how Phoenician culture spread—not through large-scale mass migration, but through a dynamic process of cultural transmissi
by ants_everywhere 1y ago
> “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.
- tbrownaw 1y agoI'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 1y agoof course it is. port cities and settlements shared slaves not love stories.
- lupusreal 1y agoThey probably sold both and more. They probably sold anything they could manage to fit on a ship, and books were almost certainly among that.
- gostsamo 1y agoThe 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 1y ago> 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.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- omneity 1y agoTrade. Phoenicians set up trade posts and like their descendants - the Carthaginians, developed a large trading network over the mediterranean sea.
- otherme123 1y agoPhoenicians were a low war civilization. The fact that you had to name a macedonian general to illustrate is telling: the general public barely know phoenician kings or generals despite lasting more than a thousand years through all Mediterraneum, unless we focus on later Carthage which were more belligerant. As of slaves, of course they had them! It was a normal thing back then. But the point here is that Phoenicians were traders, not warriors. They built settlements all over the Mediterraneum and then moved goods and culture between them. They were also avid consumers of foreign culture, for example they liked egyptian dead culture so they just copied it.
- redanddead 1y agoPhoenicians were part of many civs. They did lots of trade, and were mercantile by nature, they're not known for their conquering.