> “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.”<p>> “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.”<p>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?<p>It seems like the main hypothesis they're ruling out is migration.
> The researchers even found a pair of close relatives (ca. second cousins) bridging the Mediterranean, one buried in a North African Punic site and one in Sicily.<p>This is from over 2500 years ago. How amazing is that, that we have this capacity in DNA analysis now to discover details like this from so long ago?
My vague impression is that the Phoenicians may have been just as important, historically, as the Greeks (first alphabet seems like a huge deal!), but they just didn't leave behind as many records. I remember trying to find a good book on them without succeeding. I wonder if Carthage had beaten Rome, the Phoenicians would take away the "ancient Mediterranean genius" slot away from the Greeks, since the availability of historical materials would be reversed.
Is there an instance where "Phoenician" is not 100% bidirectionally synonymous with "Canaanite?" I've wondered why we have two terms for the same group. In this instance it is literally the same peoples and neither term gives, as far as I'm aware, any kind of specialized connotation.