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At the origin of the Libyphoenician population, there was the marriage of two people and consequently of two cultures. It was already the opinion of Livy and Diodorus of Sicily, for whom Libyphoenicians were people of mixed blood, half-phoenician, half-Libyan, and, we specify, of mixed culture. It is most often a question of cultural grafting: on the ethnic level, the Phoenician element coming from the East, a minority compared to the mass of the natives, was quickly absorbed; it could impose itself by its cultural contribution and impose the tones of the Phoenician civilization. This reciprocal assimilation required a very long period of time but it was already accomplished at the time when the city of Carthage had the empire of the western Mediterranean. Carthage was then no longer a Phoenician city in Africa, but an African city whose culture was characterized by its Phoenician dominance.

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From this penetration of the Carthaginians in the middle of the African populations was to result a kind of fusion which led to a broad ethnic and cultural community. Thus, to take an example, at the time of Saint Augustine, a sort of Libyan-Punic dialect was still spoken in certain rural areas. The civilization of Carthage had been able to impose itself little by little, but in their turn, certain indigenous customs and traditional beliefs marked of their print those of these Phoenicians become Libyphoenicians. (This name was first given to the Phoenicians installed in the colonies of the African coast; only later, we find it applied to the Libyans having adopted the Punic customs and it also seems to have taken a legal and administrative value to designate the citizens of the Punic cities who benefited from the same civil rights as the Carthaginians of the capital.) By this "Africanization", which still enriches it, the Punic civilization belongs authentically to the North African cultural heritage. "It is beyond doubt, writes Jerome Carcopino, that these colonies have, in the long run, formed as many foci of a mixed civilization that, from near to near, has spread from the coast to the continent and has prevailed over all North Africa, and for millennia, the spirit of Carthage.

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. It is to be believed that, from the beginning, more than one colonist took a wife among the natives, because the immigrants had to be in majority men.

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The close relations maintained between the Punic and Numidian spheres are illustrated finally by the many testimonies of interbreeding: the matrimonial relations between the Punic and Numidian aristocracy were frequent, just like the mixed marriages between people - genealogies indicated on Neopunic inscriptions present names of Libyan and Punic origin which mix. One sees it, the bonds between Carthage and its hinterland were important. How can one still doubt this when one considers the power reached by the African metropolis in the western Mediterranean? Could it have maintained its hegemony and confronted the great powers of the time without being able to have the human and economic resources of North-East Africa, as well as a large territorial base? It is a fact that most of the Punic troops were composed of African elements, whether Libyan or Numidian, or that African populations colonized territories directly controlled by Carthage in the Mediterranean islands or in Iberia.

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To this plasticity is added the confusion that one notices in the classic historiography: certain ancient authors distinguish badly the Libyans from the Punics. Dion Chrysostom points out that Hanno "had transformed the Carthaginians from Tyrians to Libyans" (Discourse, XXV); Arrian qualifies the explorer Hanno as "Libyan": "Hanno, the Libyan", he writes (Indica, XLIII, 11).

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In Carthage itself, as well as in all Phoenician foundations, one must not let slip the native contribution to the elaboration of the so-called Punic culture. Very early on, marriages between Phoenicians and Numidians took place: Sophonisbe, after having been promised to Massinissa, had to marry Syphax for political reasons; another king of Numidia, Oezalces, Massinissa's uncle, chose as his wife a Carthaginian woman of great family, undoubtedly Hannibal's niece (Titus Livius, XXIX, 29, 12) Amilcar Barca did not hesitate to promise one of his daughters to the Numidian prince Narhavas (Polybius, I, 78). Titus Livy (Epit. 1.L), Appian (Lib. 99 and 111), Orosius (IV, 22, 8) speak of a marriage which would have united a daughter of Massinissa to a Carthaginian. [...] Before the outbreak of the third Punic war, there was in the capital a rather strong "party" which worked for collaboration with Massinissa and perhaps even for fusion with the great Numidian kingdom. The marriage of the Numidian princess, Massinissa's own daughter, if one retains its historicity, was part of a policy of alliance and seduction practiced by the king himself in order to be admitted to the Carthaginians and to make them forget his participation in the battle of Zama at the side of Scipio the African. Speaking about the foundation of Leptis, Salluste points out that "only the language of the inhabitants of Leptis changed as a result of the marriages with Numidians." We learn that the Tyrians founders or descendants of the founders of Leptis mixed with the native population, intermarried with the Numidians. This was so frequent that the Phoenician language was altered; we witness the genesis of a Libyco-Phoenician or Libyphoenician dialect, to use a term of ancient historiography.

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The Phoenician diaspora took many different forms, ranging from simple, indirect, and occasional contacts to fullscale settlement in small enclaves, rural areas or cities. In other areas of the Mediterranean, their entanglement or hybridization with local groups was so intense that it is extremely difficult to trace separate, clearly defined identities or territories.

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Beyond our focal interest in Sardinia, the results from individuals from the Phoenician-Punic sites Monte Sirai and Villamar shed some light on the ancestry of a historically impactful Mediterranean population. Notably, they show strong genetic relationships to ancient North-African and eastern Mediterranean sources. These results mirror other emerging ancient DNA studies37,58, and are not unexpected given that the Punic center of Carthage on the North-African coast itself has roots in the eastern Mediterranean. Interestingly, the Monte Sirai individuals, predating the Villamar individuals by several centuries, show less North-African ancestry. This could be because they harbor earlier Phoenician ancestry and North-African admixture may have been unique to the later Punic context, or because they were individuals from a different ancestral background altogether. Estimated North-African admixture fractions were much lower in later ancient individuals and present-day Sardinian individuals, in line with previous studies that have observed small but significant African admixture in several present-day South European populations, including Sardinia

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All six individuals from the Punic Villamar site were inferred to have substantial levels of ancient North-African ancestry (point estimates ranging 20–35%, Supp. Fig. 14, also see ADMIXTURE and PCA results, Figs. 2 and 4). When fit with the same five-way admixture model, present-day Sardinians have a small but detectable level of North-African ancestry (Supp. Fig. 14, also see ADMIXTURE analysis, Fig. 4).

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The Ibiza Phoenician individual published in 50 232 is not consistent with forming a clade with any of the Bronze233 Age individuals from the Balaeric islands newly reported in this study, and indeed we find that she234 can not be modeled even with our least parsimonious model of 4 distal sources. However, when we235 add in a North African source of ancestry, we can fit her as a two-way mix of 18.8 ± 7.9%236 Anatolia_Neolithic and 81.2 ± 7.9% Morocco_LN ancestry (p=0.141) (Supplementary Materials). We237 also can fit the Ibiza Phoenician as two-way mixture of a variety of groups closer to her in time one238 of which is always Morocco_LN. While several of these models include a Balaeric Island Bronze Age239 source, we cannot rule out the possibility that the Ibiza Phoenician individual has no local Balaeric240 ancestry at all. Specifically, we find that we can fit her with models that do not have a Balaeric241 source and that instead have Balaeric Bronze Age individuals in the outgroups (e.g. (e.g. 17.1 ±242 3.5% France_Bell_Beaker and 82.9 ± 3.5% Morocco_LN, p=0.869) (Supplementary Table 11).

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Considering that in qpWave this individual did not form a clade with the other Balearic individuals, it is possible that these models represent an unsampled group. These results clearly demonstrate a link to North African ancestry in the Phoenician settlement of the Balearic Islands.

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The mean difference in frequency was ~6%, providing a minimum estimate of the Phoenician input

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The excess of J2 (Figure 1B), PCS1þ (Figures 1C and 1D), PCS2þ (Figure 1E), and PCS3þ (Figure 1F) in coastal Tunisia, the site of Carthage, compared with inland Tunisia is particularly salient, because these lineages are considerably more rare in North Africa than in Southern Europe. It also suggests that the Roman destruction of Carthage did not eliminate the Carthaginian gene pool.

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While contemporary groups fall within the genetic variability of other modern Sardinians, our Punic samples reveal proximity to present-day North-African and Iberian populations. Furthermore, Cabras and Belvì cluster mainly with pre-Phoenician groups, while samples from Tharros project with other Punic Sardinian individuals.

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With respect to the ancient Punic samples from Tharros, it is worth noting how they appear genetically closer to North African populations; indeed, rather than clustering with other modern Sardinians, they instead occupy an intermediate position on the right side of the PCA plot between North African groups and Southern European Iberian populations (Figure 2).

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An emblematic case of such cross-continental connectivity is observed at the archeological site of San Germano in Vetulonia (VET),where even within the same tomb, there is a clear genetic transition from a local genetic profile in the eighth to sixth century BCE to central European– and north African–related ancestries in the fourth to third century BCE. During the latter period, a similar northern African genetic signal is observed in two other individuals from a distantly located site [Tarquinia (TAQ)]. While more data from this temporal horizon are needed to determine whether these findings represent a general phenomenon, it is possible that the arrival of this ancestry was influenced by the expansion of the Carthaginian Empire across the Mediterranean (41,42)."

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In fact, the heart of the Carthaginian military power will always be constituted by the Libyans populating the interior of the Carthaginian state and, recently, by the Iberians of the territory administered by the barcids in Spain , as well as by the complements provided by the Phoenician cities of Africa, such as Utica or Hadrumetus. These units, which form the bulk of the infantry, are the most stable and reliable of the Punic army. In fact, they contributed to stabilize the Punic manpower in front of the versatility of the mercenaries, even of the auxiliaries - Gallic in particular -, or with the inexperience of the new recruits. They played a role of framing and maintenance of the discipline essential for a manpower as multicolored as the army of Hannibal. True relay of the strategist on the ground, this corps, backbone of the infantry, will play throughout the campaign of Hannibal a tactical role of primary importance.

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"The bronze table of the Cape Lacinion also informs us on the manpower left at the disposal of Asdrubal Barca, designated by his elder brother to command Punic Spain: a fleet of 50 quinqueremes, 2 quadriremes and 5 triremes; a cavalry of 2550 elements made up, in majority, of Numidians, Moors, but also Libyphenicians, and an infantry including 11 850 Africans , 300 Ligurians and 500 Balearics.

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The importance of the Numidian cavalry in the third century or so: most of the 6,000 cavalrymen who arrived in Italy after Hannibal were precisely Numidians. [...] Thus, out of the 20,000 infantrymen who reached the Po Valley at the end of 218, 12,000 were Libyans (Afri)

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We hear from Plutarch (Timoleon, 28.9) that Africa and Iberia were Carthage's great resource when it needed soldiers to fight its wars, the Carthaginians raising most of their levies from areas under Carthaginian rule, such as Africa , while mercenaries were hired from places with which Carthage had extensive trade links, such as the Balearic Islands or the Iberian peninsula

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