Abstract
While Phoenician culture and trade networks had a significant impact on Western civilizations, we know little about the Phoenicians themselves. In 1994, a Punic burial crypt was discovered on Byrsa Hill, near the entry to the National Museum of Carthage in Tunisia. Inside this crypt were the remains of a young man along with a range of burial goods, all dating to the late 6th century BCE. Here we describe the complete mitochondrial genome recovered from the Young Man of Byrsa and identify that he carried a rare European haplogroup, likely linking his maternal ancestry to Phoenician influenced locations somewhere on the North Mediterranean coast, the islands of the Mediterranean or the Iberian Peninsula. This result not only provides the first direct ancient DNA evidence of a Phoenician individual but the earliest evidence of a European mitochondrial haplogroup, U5b2c1, in North Africa.
Highlights
The Phoenicians are recognized as one of the great early civilizations of the Mediterranean
First recorded as the descendants of the Canaanites, they inhabited the shores of the eastern Mediterranean and dominated the maritime trade routes of both the eastern and, later, the western Mediterranean during the second and first millennium BCE
At the advent of the mass migration and destruction caused by the Sea-peoples throughout the eastern Mediterranean in the later part of the 2nd millennium, the Phoenician city-states
Summary
The Phoenicians are recognized as one of the great early civilizations of the Mediterranean. First recorded as the descendants of the Canaanites, they inhabited the shores of the eastern Mediterranean and dominated the maritime trade routes of both the eastern and, later, the western Mediterranean during the second and first millennium BCE. The creators of the first alphabet, the Phoenicians documented their own records on papyrus and parchment which, disintegrate over time leaving behind limited historical information. The main Phoenician coastal cities, Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and Arwad, located in what is Lebanon and southern Syria, have been continuously occupied, so rarely subjected to major archaeological excavations. At the advent of the mass migration and destruction caused by the Sea-peoples throughout the eastern Mediterranean in the later part of the 2nd millennium, the Phoenician city-states
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