Published May 27, 2016
A wax figure of "The Young Phoenician Man of Carthage" is seen during the opening of a special exhibition at the American University of Beirut (AUB) Archaeological Museum in Beirut January 29, 2014. (REUTERS/Jamal Saidi)
A study of the first DNA obtained from an ancient Phoenician reveals that the man had European ancestry.
The research team, which was co-led by Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith of the University of Otago in New Zealand, sequenced the first complete mitochondrial genome of 2,500-year-old Phoenician buried in North Africa. Experts studied a man dubbed the “Young Man of Byrsa” or “Ariche,” whose remains were taken from a sarcophagus in the ancient city of Carthage, just outside Tunis, the Tunisian capital. Carthage was the center of the Phoenician civilization.
Analysis shows that the man belonged to a rare European haplogroup – a genetic group with a common ancestor – indicating that his maternal ancestry is linked to locations on the North Mediterranean coast, probably on the Iberian Peninsula.
The findings offer the earliest evidence of the European mitochondrial haplogroup U5b2c1 in North Africa, according to Matisoo-Smith, dating its arrival to at least the late sixth century B.C.
"U5b2c1 is considered to be one of the most ancient haplogroups in Europe and is associated with hunter-gatherer populations there,” she explained, in a press release. “It is remarkably rare in modern populations today, found in Europe at levels of less than one per cent. Interestingly, our analysis showed that Ariche's mitochondrial genetic make-up most closely matches that of the sequence of a particular modern day individual from Portugal.”
Researchers note that, while the Phoenicians are thought to have originated from the area that is now Lebanon, their influence spread across the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish cities of Malaga and Cadiz, for example, were founded by Phoenicians...
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