人類学：カルタゴとフェニキアの間に家族的なつながりはほとんどない

The people of Carthage were not closely related to those from the founding Phoenician culture, a Nature paper suggests. The findings shed light on the forces that shaped the origins of the Carthaginians and the acquisition of their culture.

The Phoenicians were an ancient maritime civilization from the Levant. During the first millennium BCE, they established many colonies, including Carthage, in what is now modern Tunisia. The Carthaginians — also known as the Punic people — adopted Phoenician culture, in the form of language and religion. However, little is known about their genetic heritage, including the extent of movements between the Levantine Phoenician homeland and other settlements.

To address this issue, Devid Reich, Harald Ringbauer, Ilan Gronau and colleagues studied the ancient genomes of 210 individuals excavated from 14 major Punic sites in the Levant, North Africa, Iberia, Sicily, Sardinia and Ibiza. Punic people had very little genetic ancestry from their Levantine cultural founders, the authors found. They suggest that the Phoenicians passed on their culture to people of completely different ancestry, with almost no genetic contribution. In addition, the Punic people had high levels of genetic diversity, suggesting that Punic people were mixing with people from distant places, mainly Sicily and Greece.