Top Highlights

• Herodotus and many other Greeks thus believed the Phoenicians originated near the Erythraean Sea, which was a designation for the northwest Indian Ocean around the Gulf of Aden. This would have meant the Phoenicians came from Yemen or Somalia, although Herodotus later claimed Bahrain.[3] Another Greek historian, Strabo, would reiterate the belief t...
• There were also distinct similarities between ancient Phoenician DNA and the samples taken from native individuals of southern Turkey, Malta, Sicily, Morocco, Spain, Sardinia, Ibiza, and Tunisia. These results resulted in the team concluding that the Phoenicians most likely hailed from Lebanon because they possessed a distinct genetic signature cal...
• Wherever the Phoenicians may have come from, they were ultimately an offshoot of the Canaanites. Although most associate the Canaanites with the state of Canaan, the term actually refers to a series of indigenous peoples and populations that lived in an area in the ancient Near East called the Levant. The Levant is an approximate historical, geogra...
• As a unit, the Canaanites were forced to carve a unique niche for themselves in the ancient world because they lived in an arid region surrounded by powerful enemies like the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Akkadians, and even Minoans from Crete. Creating a homeland was difficult, and a stable military was hard to feed and shelter while on the m...
• The Phoenicians would also inherit the Mesopotamian religion, which was polytheistic and rooted in tribalism and multiple cultures. They believed in a supreme god who had managed to produce lesser deities, and they often performed religious rites and rituals meant to boost agriculture, wealth, and health. They had a priesthood and a mythology that ...