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The Ship Sarcophagus: a Phoenician ship carved on a sarcophagus, 2nd century AD. The theory of Phoenician discovery of the Americas suggests that the earliest Old World contact with the Americas was not with Columbus or Norse settlers, but with the Phoenicians (or, alternatively, other Semitic peoples) in the first millennium BC. [1]
Phoenicia was an ancient Semitic civilization originating in the coastal strip of the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. [6] [7] The Phoenicians were organized in city-states along the northern Levantine coast, including Tyre, Sidon and Byblos. [8]
Herodotus believed that the Phoenicians originated from Bahrain, [16] [17] a view shared centuries later by the historian Strabo. [18] This theory was accepted by the 19th-century German classicist Arnold Heeren, who noted that Greek geographers described "two islands, named Tyrus or Tylos, and Aradus, which boasted that they were the mother country of the Phoenicians, and exhibited relics of ...
The name Phoenicia is an ancient Greek exonym that did not correspond precisely to a cohesive culture or society as it would have been understood natively. [8] [9] Therefore, the division between Canaanites and Phoenicians around 1200 BC is regarded as a modern and artificial construct. [7] [10]
The name Phoenicia is an ancient Greek exonym that did not correspond precisely to a cohesive culture or society as it would have been understood natively. [7] [8] Therefore, the division between Canaanites and Phoenicians around 1200 BC is regarded as a modern and artificial division. [6] [9]
The Phoenician colonial system was motivated by economic opportunity, not expansionist ideology, and as such, the Phoenicians lacked the numbers or even the desire to establish an "empire" overseas. The colonies were therefore independent city-states, though most were relatively small, probably having a population of less than 1,000.
The mystery is still unravelling, and on Wednesday, a major breakthrough was announced. Researchers say they've now managed to digitally unroll and start reading one of the ancient scrolls.
In 1996, Mark McMenamin proposed that Phoenician sailors discovered the New World c. 350 BC. [105] The Phoenician state of Carthage minted gold staters in 350 BC bearing a pattern in the reverse exergue of the coins, which McMenamin initially interpreted as a map of the Mediterranean with the Americas shown to the west across the Atlantic.