Jesus Christ, Phoenician?
And Other Speculations about the World’s First Sea Trading Empire
Chances are, if you have heard about the Phoenicians at all, it was probably in the context of the origin of the alphabet. However, in the last decade or so, a picture has begun to emerge about this mysterious culture that should actually be fascinating to futurists and those interested in the history of science and ideas. This mysterious group of seafarers created the first true naval empire, served to accelerate both the bronze and the iron age, may have have brought red hair to the Irish, and may actually be the real reason that Christianity spread so quickly two millennia ago.
Please note that much of this is speculation. While we are getting a better idea about history through genetic drift in populations, most of this essay takes place at the very rise of civilization, some of it going back 10,000 years or more, and much of it involves a culture that, despite having invented the alphabet, left almost nothing in their wake about what kind of culture and society they had.
Cedar and Bronze
If you look at most ancient settlements, the one defining character of most of them was the use of fired bricks of mud. It would take the combination of bronze nails and access to trees for lumber-based construction to take place, and even there, it was far more likely that the lumber was used not for houses but for boats.
The ice ages performed a major culling operation on humans. As it receded, population began to regrow outward from the equator. One population that emerged about 10,000 BC settled into the area eventually known as Anatolia in Southern Turkey, that extended in turn down the Levant. It was an area defined by temperate forests of pine and cedar and would have probably looked a lot like Seattle, Washington, today. The inhabitants likely had brown or red hair, with the likelihood of the red showing up in the more northern parts.
In time, the temperatures began to warm, and as they did so, the benefits of lighter shades began to decline in comparison to the health costs — light hair and skin meant a higher incidence of cancer and higher levels of melanin provided greater levels of protection. In some parts of this population, the gene for expressing red hair itself disappeared, especially towards the east. Small isolated villages learned (or possibly relearned) the art of agriculture, and over time the population increased. The ancient city of Ur (which would eventually become Bagdad, Iraq) sprang up as stone working using ziggurats (an early kind of pyramid) became commonplace, eventually followed by Babylon, Ninevah and others.
In Egypt (which had not yet slid into desertification) early kings established their dominance with ziggurats of their own. Meanwhile in Turkey, Hittites from the North (from an area that would eventually spawn the Scythians) began to put pressure on the indigenous Levantine population, which started to concentrate in Thrace, Anatolia, and the areas that would eventually be known as Canaan and Israel.
Around this time, likely in Thrace, an arms race began. Settled agriculture had placed more demand on improving crop yields as populations rose, and flint, which had been the blade material of choice, was too brittle and fragile to be used to break up hard dirt with any regularity. Copper was better, but it was still too soft. However, eventually someone stumbled upon the idea first of pounding tin sheets into copper, then as smelting techniques evolved, melting copper and tin together to create a new “metal” that had never existed before naturally: bronze.
Bronze may have made for better plowshares, but its military applications were what made it such a profound innovation. Bronze was hard enough to keep an edge and a point, making it ideal first for spears and later for swords. It was also strong enough to deflect the same, so it became instrumental for both shields and armor. Finally, bronze was key to the creation of a whole host of buckles, buttons, and similar artifacts, perhaps most important of these being nails.
The large woods that existed during this time were both a boon and a curse. Transporting goods in this area was difficult by land because the forests were there. However, unlike with areas to the south, the big cedar trees were large enough that they could be chopped down, at first with flint, but later with bronze blades. The Canaanites then hollowed these out to create long dugout canoes, often with elaborate carvings such as serpent or horse heads on the prow. As they became more experienced in deep-water craft, they began introducing sails made of canvas or linen (as compared to papyrus in Egypt). Pressured from the north by the Hittites, the east by the Assyrians, and the south by Egypt, the Canaanites went the only direction they could — west, into the waters of the Mediterranean.
They started out by making a deal with the Egyptians. The Egyptian culture had evolved around the Nile River, and had established themselves as a river civilization. However, the Egyptians had few trees, and the ones they did have were palm trees, sycamores and similar softwood fruit trees that were completely useless for building. The Canaanites would chop down Cedar trees, create floating barges from the logs, then tow the logs with their boats. As their boats became faster and larger, they realized that they could carry other goods: cedar oil, dyes (including a purple dye made from the Murex nautilus that became the gold standard for wealthy aristocrats), grains, cattle and other things. They also discovered that, once having reached their destination, they could trade goods for other goods (coin trades didn’t really come until almost 600 BC), and sell those goods elsewhere. The Canaanites also began to facilitate the use of bronze as arms and armor, and became skilled metal-smiths and artisans as well as early arms dealers.
As traders, the Canaanites began to dominate sea trade throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, and as they did so, they set up small enclaves or outposts in various cities from Troianos (Troy) in the north to Thebes in Egypt. Around 2000 BC, they established small colonies on what would become Thera and later Knossos in Crete, largely assimilating the paleo-people on both of those islands. As the Egyptians and Assyrians became more aggressive, they also consolidated more and more of their holdings in the Greek Peloponnesian islands in the Aegean Sea. It would be the Greeks that came up with name “Phoenix” for the Canaanites, which might have in turn come either from their Tyrian dye or from the very occasional red hair that showed up among the more northern Canaanites. The Phoenicians often spoke of themselves as the Children of Dan, which may have been a goddess.
Alphabets and Trading Ships
Canaanites developed an odd admixture, a pidgin, of Anatolian, Aramaic, Assyrian and other languages, as is usual among trade ports. The language would have a profound influence on the emerging Hebrew language to the south (and vice versa). However, because running a shipping empire required knowing what one was carrying, these sea people also began using a special condensed notation, taking the Sumerian cuneiform notation and hitting on the brilliant idea of creating symbols from overlapping strokes that represented individual sounds, creating the first alphabet. Because the shippers were the transport protocol, the notation these people developed began to be used from Egypt to Jerusalem to Tyre to Troy to Athens, sparking a profound revolution as portable writing made long distance communication possible. In effect, these Canaanite traders created the first Internet.
They also created one of the first written numeric systems, which suggested a duodecimal (12-based) base:
(in other words lamed actually indicated 12, mem, 24 and so forth). Twelve is actually a very reasonable base for a maritime culture, as a circle (or compass rose) can be divided into 4 quadrants, each then trisected into 30 degree subsections, as well as natural octants at 45 degrees. It wasn’t a decimal system (it would take another 2500 years before the innovation of the zero and place-based digits) but it was nonetheless vastly more efficient than using a simple tally;
Indeed, the Phoenicians were likely quite skilled as mathematicians and astronomers, and it is very likely that astronomical navigation (and quite probably the zodiac) was itself a Canaanite invention — land based navigation was mostly accomplished through the use of landmarks, but once out of sight of land, the only fixed references were the stars and sun. This would also explain why there is a surprising degree of uniformity in Mediterranean cultures around star signs.
Around 1650 BC, the volcanic island of Thera, one of the major seaports for the Minoan Phoenicians, blew in one of the most cataclysmic European eruptions in five thousand years, dwarfing the explosion at Pompeii by an order of magnitude. This not only turned Thera into three separate islands (what is now Santarini), but also changed the climate of the Southern Mediterranean for decades, with the biggest effect being the downwind spread of ash on Crete and years of cooler than normal temperatures. It is very likely that the refugees escaped north and east, eventually landing upon the island of Rhodes, which went from a sleepy backwater to a thriving metropolitan seaport in under a hundred years. Its giant statue of a bronze warrior visible from Sea become one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. When Odysseus went to war against Troy (six hundred years later), most of his ships and many of the crews came from Rhodes — especially telling since by then Rhodes and Troy were in direct competition for maritime trade. While Odysseus may have gone to defend the honor of Greece, it is more than likely that he was just one more petty Greek king in what amounted to a trade war between two major sea powers.
Back around 1500 BC, the Mycenaeans (the native population of mainland Greece) sensed that the Minoans were vulnerable, and so led an invasion that captured Crete. Theseus and the Minotaur is likely a mythological retelling of that story, as bullfighting was a national sport for the Minoans. Indeed, many Greek myths, including the gold-touch of Midas, likely were not so subtle digs at the wealth and power of the Minoans, especially because, like most maritime cultures, the Minoans were not above piracy, and until then they had managed to bottle up the Greek presence in the Mediterranean.
The Ferengi of the Ancient World
In many respects, the Phoenicians could be considered the Ferengi of the Ancient World, from the Star Trek race of (frequently ridiculed) interstellar traders. Their ships were everywhere, and they tended to wear their wealth to keep it close. They had a reputation for being shrewd to the point of conniving, they were mercenaries first and foremost, and they were considered brazen and unstable. Admittedly, most of these opinions came from their enemies (of whom they had many, considering their long reign as naval mercenaries).
However, they were also disseminators of culture. Pottery patterns, bronze jewelry and weapons and even clothing styles crossed the Mediterranean on Phoenician hulls, to the extent that by 800 BC, they had in subtle ways cross-pollinated religions from Egypt to Spain.
However, even with fast ships, they had trouble necessarily creating a unified culture largely because they were so spread out. When the Kingdom of Israel was created in the 9th century BC, Canaanite carpenters helped to build the temples with Canaanite lumber, yet the relationship between the Israelis and the Canaanites was always fraught with some conflict, as Israel’s move to mono-theism contrasted with the more polytheistic approach of the Canaanites (the Canaanite word for a god was Baal, a name that should be familiar to scholars of the Bible). Tyre, Sidon and Byblios were all invaded several times over the centuries, to the extent that the story about the Tower of Babel was much more likely about the city of Byblios than it was the eastern city-state of Babylon.
Again, the level of systemic thinking here was pretty impressive — the Phoenicians lived and died by their trade routes, not their land holdings. They had no king or emperor, but rather had a semi-democratic system made up of the various shipping fleet owners, which in turn were responsive to their respective captains (with the captains in turn giving considerably more latitude to their sailors than was the case for most people in this era). Not surprisingly, this system looked a great deal like the pirate “fleets” of the 18th century in the Atlantic, which were more like freehold corporations than feudal estates.
Canaan and Israel
The relationship between Canaan and Israel has been a long and storied one. The predecessors to the ancient Jewish lineages likely came from Babylon (modern day Bagdad) around 3000 BC, moving west and settling in nomadic tribes throughout the Levant. They may or may not have been the same people as the Canaanites at this point, though certainly they shared many of the same religious elements. Their language was also similar, both speaking what is now referred to as Northwest Semitic, which began to split into two sublanguages — Ugaritic (an extinct language based in Assyria) and Early Aramaic, with both Canaanites and Israelis then shaped into Phoenician and Ancient Hebrew respectively. Chances were good that for much of that period, they were essentially regional dialects, perhaps as close as Scottish English would be to the English of London.
Around 1500, the Egyptian empire expanded Northwards to encompass most of the Levant up to Canaan, most likely in order to gain control over the shipping trade that the Canaanites had been building up since around 2500 BC. There is little evidence historically for the mass abduction and kidnapping of Israelis that form the basis for the Exodus story within the Talmud, though climate change may have been involved. During this period, the ecosystems all across the Fertile Crescent region collapsed, possibly due to the same increase in volcanism that saw the explosion of Thera in the 17th century BC, possibly due to overfarming and a cascade of failures as the region began drying out.
That border was significant for several reasons. Prior to the environmental collapse of the thirteen century BC, most of the Levant was covered in Cedar and Pine trees. The Sea of Galilee may have served to anchor this ecosystem, but from there south, the new ecosystem was hard pressed to support much more than olive bushes, and even as the region recovered in the 11th and 10th century, Northern Canaan remained largely focused on shipbuilding and woodworking, while Southern Canaan (Israel) became more agrarian, supporting crops of olives, grapes and figs.
By the twelfth century, Egypt had contracted almost back to its original borders, and the Levant had split into the three regions of Northern Canaan, Syria, and Southern Canaan, with Canaan starting roughly at the southern border of the Sea of Galilee (near the Golan Heights). During this period as well, a charismatic prophet with the Egyptian name of Mase (Moses) gave rise to the first true monotheistic religion, spread further by his disciple Abrahim (Abraham), and the region became split between the older polytheistic Canaanite religion and the new Abrahamic religions.
Prior to the rise of Judaism, Canaanite/Phoenician mythology incorporated a fair amount of the early Babylonian heritage — there was a central male bull god name Baal, a name that meant simply Lord or God , which would be transformed into the Aramaic El, and much later the Muslim Allah. The feminine form Belit, or Belisht, became subsumed under the goddess Ashtoreth (later Ishtar, Atargatis and Esther). Additionally, the sea-going Phoenicians in particular also recognized Yum , the Sea God, which may have been a corruption of Ea or Oannes, and would in turn be transformed into the Jewish figure Noah. Mariners also prayed to the goddess Asherah, the Lady of the Seas, whose likeness figured on totems and the prow of ships. Asherah, in particular, was associated with the planet Venus, which had an outsized role to ship navigators.
Finally, the Phoenicians incorporated elements of the Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite and Egyptian mythologies. The goddess Anut, Asherah’s sister, may have been a reflection of the Egyptian Nut, the Sky Goddess, but whereas Asherah may have been one of the influences on Athena, Anut was Hecate, the goddess of bloody war and death, who was used by Baal (or Yum) to thin the ranks of the celestial pantheon whenever anyone stepped out of line. In addition to these, many Phoenicians also had familial gods (Cherubhim) which would later factor into Jewish Kaballah and Christian hagiography.
In 1050 BC, the United Kingdom of Israel was formed by Saul, creating a dynasty that would lastwith Saul’s son David and grandson Solomon controlling the Levant from Canaan all the way down to Gaza, until 930. Internal fighting eventually split the kingdom into two, the Kingdom of Samaria in the North and the Kingdom of Judea (which contained Jersulam) in the south. During this period, the Canaanites broke free, and even areas such as Galilee retained considerable Phoenician cultural influences.
By the historical period of Israel in the early Iron Age, the two cultures maintained a love/hate relationship with one another. Canaan/Phoenicia had always been defined by its ports at Acer, Tyre, Sidon and eventually Beirut, but with the exception of the port at Jaffa, Israel remained much more focused on agriculture and land trade.
From 824 to 671 BC, the Assyrians expanded outward, eventually capturing most of the Middle East from what is now Southern Turkey to Egypt, and from Cyprus to Iran, with the exception of a small nucleus around Judea.
This was the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora, and it most likely was accomplished aboard Phoenician hulls. Jews fleeing the occupation Israel settled in the Phoenician trading colonies throughout the Mediterranean, from Rhodes and Crete to Sicily, and from there to Cadiz and Lisbon.
The eastern Phoenician city-states would fall yet again, this time to Alexander of Macedon in 332 BC. It’s worth noting, however, that much of the spread of Phoenician colonies came from Crete and Rhodes, so even when Tyre was under attack, Phoenician-originated holds were still plying goods as far north as the Crimean and as far west as Spain.
It was during this period, after the shipyards from Tyre to Acer had been occupied not once but twice, that the Phoenicians decided it was a good time to shift the base of their operations westward, to an outpost on the African shores of the Mediterranean … Carthage.
Roman Salt and the Elephants of Carthage
the Canaanites sent out expeditionary forces westward, to create outposts at Carthage, Sicily, Tangiers and Cadiz. With the exception of Carthage, these were not large cities. A pattern found repeatedly in Phoenician history is that they preferred to establish enclaves without existing cities, rather than carving out territory directly. This made sense — they had soldiers, but those soldiers were marines, intended to support naval operations rather than being occupying forces. Carthage was exceptional in that it was considered something of a backup capital, in case Tyre fell (as it would, repeatedly).
The death of Alexander the Great at the age of 33 resulted in the collapse of the Greek empire, but by then, the Phoenicians had effectively lost their eastern flank. A sea empire lives and dies by its ports. Unfortunately for them, even as the Hellenic empire was collapsing, another one was rising on the Italian isthmus: the Romans. The Italian peninsula actually hosted an early Phoenician colony in Etruria (now Tuscany), contributing ironically to Phoenician genetic markers showing up in Italians as the Etruscans spread throughout the northern part of the peninsula. Rome itself started as a fairly small tribe, but had one huge advantage over its neighbors.
Rome had salt.
Salt was a major spice and preservative throughout much of Europe, and Rome was built atop one of the largest salt beds in the Mediterranean. What Rome didn’t have was a major port, and consequently they began to expand outwards until they eventually had one, taking over various other tribes until they eventually conquered the ancient Etrurian cities as well. However, this also shaped their thinking in a radical way — without a long history of travel by sea, with relatively limited woods capable of building ships, and with the benefits that the new iron metallurgy gave them, Rome developed into a land power, not a sea one.
Their expansion took them into the Alps, West into Gaul (France) and Iberia (Spain) and eastward through the collapsing empire of Greece and all the way to the Egypt. Yet they had trouble when trying to break into the Mediterranean, because once they got to Sicily, they met the newly ensconced Carthaginians. These western Phoenicians had become adept at naval warfare, denying the Romans access into the Great Sea, and raiding their shipping.
The Phoenicians in Carthage had allied with the native Berbers, intermarrying and establishing a culture that would in time become known as the Moors. Thus, even as the Romans tried to establish western outposts, they were met by Iberian Phoenicians in the Southern part of Spain. By the mid-third century, Rome was really beginning to hate their neighbors to the south.
This ultimately culminated in what has become known as the Punic Wars (Punic being the Roman version of the word Phoenician). The first war, in 264 became a battle for the control of Sicily and surrounding islands. Aware that they had an advantage in naval combat, the Carthaginians attempted to take more of Sicily by sea engagements. The Romans, who were lousy ship handlers, but great engineers, at first lost engagements until they figured out how to nullify the Phoenician advantage by the use of special sea bridges. Eventually Carthage sued for peace after ceding Sicily and Corsica.
In the intervening years, Carthage began expanding along most of Western Africa under the Punic general Hannibal. One of Hannibal’s biggest weapons was literally huge: African elephants trained for battle. Carrying elephants on ship to Sicily was not feasible, but it was possible for elephants to swim across the Straits of Gibralter. Once there, the general managed to take control of most of the Iberian Peninsula and from there to follow the coastline until entering the Italian alps. Indeed, what was most impressive about the second Punic war was that Hannibal managed to invade Italy from the north … WITH ELEPHANTS!!
However, the final push proved costly, and after Hannibal had managed to take much of Northern Italy, the ruling council on Carthage made a terrible mistake. The push across the alps had been costly, and Hannibal had overextended his supply lines and needed new supplies quickly before he could take Rome. The consortium of sea captains that ruled Carthage refused to authorize the expenditure, forcing Hannibal to fall back to Iberia and leave Rome intact.
The close call galvanized the Romans, who began to take back the lands in Iberia and eventually taking control of Carthage, which they left as an autonomous city, after conquering much of the surrounding territory.
Sixty years later, the Numidians (who were now Roman vassals) attacked the borders of Carthage. Carthage repelled then in 151 BC, but the attack gave the Romans an opportunity to solve a pressing problem. By that point Rome had grown to a population of 400,000, and it was struggling to feed its population. Carthage sat on prime farmland, and the Romans seized upon the incident as a Bello Causus to take care of the city once and for all. They crossed into Sicily, then from there landed in Africa. The Romans ran into setbacks almost immediately, as the two generals appointed to take the battle to the Phoenicians lost troops to sneak attacks and poor planning.
The Roman Senate then replaced them with the General Scipio, who took the city, turned most of the citizens into slaves, and killed tens of thousands. With Carthage destroyed and Cadiz in Roman hands, the Phoenician empire effectively ended. Carthage was eventually rebuilt by the Romans (it would eventually become folded into the city of Tunis, in Tunisia).
Phoenicians and the Spread of Christianity
On the topic of Christianity, one of the more interesting theories that I’ve run across was the idea that Jesus Christ might actually not have been Jewish, but rather Phoenician. Part of this has to do with proximity — most of the places mentioned in the New Testament are located in northern Israel.
Nazareth, which was where Mary was reputedly born, is roughly 40 miles from Tyre, and less than 20 miles from Acer, which had a fairly heavy Canaanite population. Joseph’s occupation as a carpenter is also suggestive, especially if carpenter may actually have been a mistranslation of ship-builder. There was some evidence that Joseph, while not a wealthy man, was not actually a poor one, and given the evidence of his disciples, Jesus likely was surprisingly middle-class; a ship-builder’s son would have been well educated and literate. He would have been comfortable around sailors and fishermen because he probably spent some time aboard ship, and Joseph and Mary had come up from Egypt to Israel, suggesting that they were well used to shipboard travel.
What’s more, during that time, the Roman territory of Phoenicia actually extended south of the Roman territory of Galilee (which holds Nazareth), while Galilee was completely outside of Judaea. Had he been born Canaanite, it would actually explain why he didn’t seem to follow the model of a Jewish Rabbi, because he wasn’t one. However, he would be fluent in Hebrew because it was the language spoken around him.
It would also explain other facets of the difference between Judaism and what would become Christianity. Canaan was not Judaic at this point, but it was moving away from what had been a purely polytheistic mode to a monotheistic one based primarily upon the spread of the Dionysic Greek Mysteries model, Roman Mithraism and Buddhism, all of which were filtering through Phoenician culture at this stage.
One of the most telling aspects of Christianity is the existence of Satan. The Old Testament does not have a strong “tempter” figure, and the few times that Satan is mentioned the context is that of a defense lawyer— a legal figure who provides God with counter arguments, in effect a literal devil advocate. However, Phoenician philosophy at the time would have been very much in keeping with the notion of a tempter, and would also have been much more open to the kind of hagiographic world that definitely differentiates Christianity from Judaism.
This also solves another mystery that has mystified secular historians and biblical scholars. How did Christianity spread so quickly across the Mediterranean? Religions are very much like contagious diseases — they both tend to follow the rules of epidemiology. What that means is that you need both susceptible targets and vectors to get virulent agents to those targets. Epidemiologically, Christianity’s spread makes no sense, because if both Jesus and his disciples were (mainly) Jewish, the contagion would die out for lack of vectors long before it hit critical mass.
However, if both were predominantly Phoenicians, that changes things. Phoenicians had long been noted as being very religious, but their religion was already trending in the direction that Jesus was pushing. They were sea traders, which meant that they would tend to carry their faith with them to whatever target ports they landed in, and as a culture they tended to be a natural evangelists, pushing not only goods but also ideas wherever they went.
Even given the antipathy that Rome had with Carthage, there were enclaves of Phoenicians in Sicily, Corsica, Cadiz, Byzantium, Thebes, Rhodes, Tunis and elsewhere. What’s more, Lebanon (the current incarnation of Canaan) has some of the oldest known Christian communities anywhere. People tend to adopt new religious beliefs that most closely align with their old ones, and once Christianity entered into the Phoenician community, it spread like wildfire from there into the surrounding population.
Phoenicians and the Story of Red Hair
The story about Phoenicians doesn’t necessarily end there. I’ve long been fascinated by red hair. There were two dominant waves of Indo-Europeans that could draw their origins from early Persians. The first wave, which went north and east around the Black Sea, would eventually end up populating most of central Europe all the way to Russia (with one big exception around the Volga river) and would end up in Y-Haplogroup R1a. They would have largely missed the Hittite populations. The second group of Persians would go almost due West, through the Hittite and Canaanite populations. It’s unclear whether the Hittites originally had red hair, though they were known to have blonde hair (the blonde Helen of Troy, a Hittite city, comes to mind), but the aboriginal Phoenicians may have had the MC1R mutation.
There’s a very curious phenomenon that affects hair color: at 45° N Latitude, hair color begins to lighten in response to lower amounts of ultraviolet radiation. Hair that is normally very dark becomes lighter shade of browns and eventually blonde. If the MC1R mutation exists as a dual recessive trait, then it appears red instead.
R1b is found in greatest concentration in a few places — Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England (stronger in the West than the East), Portugal, Spain and southern Italy, Romania, in the Volga … and Lebanon and with Ashkenazi Jews. Given the close proximity (and shared history) of Canaan and Israel, it is very likely that the Jews of Galilee especially frequently traveled on Phoenician ships, settled into Phoenician enclaves (or vice versa) and took Phoenician spouses. By the 11th century AD, Ashkenazi Jews made up only 3% of the worldwide population of Jews, and they were concentrated in Sicily, Spain and Tunisia, all areas associated with the Phoenicians. They have R1b markers, but also have markers for J2 Y-haplogroup, which most likely reflects the ancient Babylonian origins of both Phoenicians and Israelis. This hints that the MC1R mutation may be connected to in some way to both markers, though this is just speculation on the author’s part.
The case for Phoenicians in Great Britain is intriguing, but weaker. The Phoenicians had been trading in tin since the development of bronze. By the late Bronze Age (after 1000 BC), they had trade routes all the way to Iberia, including the tin mines there. Cornwall had one of the larger tin mines in the known world at the time, and the likelihood that the Phoenicians knew of these mines was high. The Picts, who lived in much of Great Britain before the Celts came, may have been indigenous to the islands from the time when it was actually connected to the mainland (oddly, about the same time that early Levantine populations expanded in the waning days of the Lower Dryas Ice Age).
It’s possible that some time around 1000 BC that Phoenician traders landed in Ireland. This was a period of intense exploration driven by the worry that Canaan was in peril from its neighbors. There were several Phoenician ports in Spain, and the Phoenicians certainly could have made the lengthy trip to Cornwall or the southern shores of Ireland from Cadiz or Portugal. There are several artifacts throughout Ireland that had characteristics similar to those of the Phoenicians, including a bronze horse, and the oldest Ogham runes, the “alphabet” of the Irish and later Scots inhabitants, bore more similarity to Phoenician letters than either Greek or Latin ones.
Thus, there is a distinct possibility that the Iberian Phoenicians landed either in Cornwall in Wales or Dublin in Ireland. It is indeed noteworthy that one of the most prevalent symbols of the Phoenicians was the winged serpent or dragon, a symbol that was often flown on the sails of their ships. It was also the symbol of Wales even before the Romans landed in the first century AD. It’s also worth noting that the oldest Britons did not share the genetic heritage of most of the mainland — what little remains of the ancient Brythonic language (especially in Wales) bears more resemblance to the Iberian/Gaelic languages than it does to the more Germanic Celts.
What’s more, by the time the Romans invaded, the red hair that seems a hallmark of the Phoenicians was already fairly common (about 15% of the population). The warrior queen Boadica was rumored to have vibrant red hair. This would be consistent with a population where about 30% had the MC1R mutation (the Iberian Phoenicians) and the remainder did not (the short, dark haired indigenous Caledonii/Picts).
It is tempting (and has been suggested more than once by scholars) that the Tuatha de Danaan of Welsh mythology were in fact the same as the Children of Dan, the name that the Phoenicians frequently used for themselves. The evidence for this is sketchy at best, though the likelih(ood that the Fomorians of that cycle were Scythians (out of what today is Hungary and Bulgaria) lends some weight to this, as does the use of the Dragon as the official symbol of Wales even today. One of the most common symbols of the Eastern Phoenicians was the Winged Serpent, which is just another way of saying “dragon”.
As the Norse, Roman and Germano-Celtic invaders arrived in successive waves, the indigenous population was pushed farther North and West. This can be seen in the ratio of R1b to R1a (which lacks the MC1R gene) in the population, with the areas around Dover and Oxford have far more of the R1a admixture and R1b being strongest in the Highlands of Scotland and Northwest Wales. Ireland has a larger population of red-heads (about 16%) but has a smaller overall possession of the MC1R mutation than Scotland.
It is possible that the Phoenicians may have also made it as far West as the Americas. There are subtle clues, including the presence of both inscriptions and coins, that suggest that the may have emigrated to the Americas during the late Bronze or early Iron Age. While there have been several writers who claim that the early (pre-Classic) Mayans were influenced by the Phoenicians, neither timing nor culture offer much similarity. However, in Georgia, certain architectural structures and petroglyphs (including one that bears a surprising resemblance to the Phoenician god Baal) have been found that do beggar the question, dating back to the Carthaginians.
What Happened To The Phoenicians?
By the early part of the Christian Era, the two thousand year “empire” was drawing to a close. Over time, Phoenician outposts and enclaves began to be absorbed into the populations where they’d settled. In Libya,Tunisia and Algeria, the Carthagians intermarried with the local Berber population to become the Moors, and for a several centuries represented the center of Christendom in Africa. This culture extended up through Spain, Portugal and Southwest France as well.
The Dark Ages (with the Fall of Rome and the move of Christendom to Constantinople) also saw the rise of the Umayadd Caliphate after the death of the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century AD, which also spread Islam as a viable religion (the Caliphate itself started out as being largely secular, as significant portions of Africa at the time were still Christian). By the middle of the eighth century, this empire extended from Iran to Algeria, including most of the Western Phoenician territories. However, the Arabic treatment of most of the non-Arab populations became more harsh over time, with Berbers often used as shock troops and increasingly enslaved. In 750 AD, the Berbers revolted, becoming the first Muslim states outside of the Umayadd Caliphate (though not the last, as other areas of the once large Caliphate also broke away signalling the end of that empire).
While the Berbers maintained a fairly prominent sea power, the collapse of Western Europe dramatically reduced trade in Northwest Africa, and the African Phoenicians fragmented into bands and tribes. In the East, the Arab rising absorbed Acer, Tyre and Byblios, which remained under Muslim hands until the Crusades, eventually becoming modern Lebanon. The Phoenicians continued to spawn belief systems, including the Maronite Christian Church, which would eventually merge with the Eastern Catholic Church, and the Druze religion, an early form of Unitarianism that included elements from Islam, Greek philosophers, and Abrahamic scholars. The Druze religion in particular was emblematic of the Phoenicians, taking an inclusive approach to religion that has often led to persecution in areas outside of the Levant.
Genetically, most Lebanese have an admixture of both the proto-Syriac J(x2) and J2 (ancient Phoenician) markers, along with a not surprisingly high percentage of R1b. Some of this may have been due to the Crusades (where Western Europeans, especially the Scots, likely stayed and had children) but some of it may go back thousands of years to the early Hittites, while there is also likely a significant contribution from both Minoan Crete and Rhodes (especially among the Christian population). As such, it’s quite plausible that Phoenician men had more than a passing resemblance to people like Casey Kasem (the voice of Scooby and Shaggy), consumer advocate Ralph Nader or actor Jamie Farr (Klinger from M*A*S*H, who has become a passionate Lebanese advocate), and the women like Amal Clooney (actor George Clooney’s wife), actresses Zoe Seldana and Selma Hayek and singer Shakira.
However, for the most part, the Phoenician story remains an elusive one. The usual touchstones by which we learn about a culture — the remains of physical structures and art — is lacking because the culture hid in the shadows of other cultures, except for places like Knossos in Crete, and even there much of the remains of Crete’s ancient past are of the Mycenaeans who conquered the Minoans in the 16th Century BC. The Phoenicians likely had great writers, but few of these works survive. With the use of genetics historians are beginning to tease out what this people was like, but much like other ancient peoples such as the Etruscans, the Phoenicians remain a true mystery.
Kurt Cagle is a writer, futurist and data analyst, and is fascinated by the hidden stories of history and science. Clap or respond to let me know what you think!
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://selfscroll.com/jesus-christ-phoenician/
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