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Another article I wrote for a history website, this one dealing with the biological relationships of the ancient Carthaginians. My ultimate thesis is that the Carthaginians were an ethnic polyglot, neither wholly black like some Afrocentrists claim nor wholly "Caucasoid" as popularly believed. Feedback appreciated as always!
Who Were the Carthaginians?
Actor Vin Diesel has recently announced that he and Denzel Washington will star in two movies that are both directed by Tony Scott and set in the ancient northwest African city of Carthage. Diesel says he will play the famous general Hannibal Barca, the man who led an army of elephants across the Alps towards Rome, in the second movie whereas Washington will be Hannibal's father Hamilcar in the first movie (WorstPreviews 2010). The decision to cast the dark-skinned African-American Washington as a Carthaginian leader brings to mind a heated debate that has surrounded the Carthaginians: were they black Africans?
Perhaps the first man to bring up the question of Hannibal and his compatriots' ethnic background was the Jamaican-born journalist Joel Augustus Rogers (1883-1965), who in numerous writings asserted that a number of famous historical figures traditionally portrayed as “white” were really black or had recent black ancestry. Among the many individuals Rogers claimed were black or mulatto were the Macedonian Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra, American President Abraham Lincoln, composer Ludwig Van Beethoven, and of course Hannibal (Adams 2005). With regards to the Ptolemies and Carthaginians, Rogers reasoned that since they lived on the African continent, they must have been black.
Not only is this poor reasoning, but it betrays a lack of knowledge about Carthage's origins. What Rogers overlooked is that Carthage was not an indigenous African civilization in the way ancient Egypt, Mali, and Great Zimbabwe were, but was rather a colony founded by Phoenician settlers from the area now called Lebanon in 814 BC. Those people were no more African than the Dutch settlers who would become South African Boers; their true biological and cultural affinities lay with the Middle East.
That said, the Carthaginians did eventually expand their empire to cover much of the northwest African coastline, so no doubt they assimilated some indigenous populations. There is thus no guarantee that the Barcas' bloodline was purely Phoenician. For Hannibal or anyone in his family to be black, we must assume that they mixed with black peoples who were already living in northwestern Africa prior to Phoenician colonization, raising the question of just who were the people aboriginal to that part of the continent.
Given that northern Africa has historically been invaded and settled many times not only by Phoenicians but also Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Turks, and others from Europe and the Middle East, and given the extensive importation of both sub-Saharan and European slaves into the area during the Islamic period, it would be naïve to conclude that the original northwest African population necessarily resembled the area's modern inhabitants. A better solution would be analyzing the skeletal remains left behind by northwest Africans who lived in ancient times, for populations vary in skeletal morphology and especially the features of the skull (or cranium). What does this type of anthropological analysis have to say about the biological relationships of the ancient northwest Africans?
It appears that coastal northwest Africans like the ones whom the Carthaginians would have ruled have been physically distinct from black African populations as long as recorded history. For example, one study carried out by Pierre M. Vermeersch (2002) compared the skulls of ancient northwest Africans with those of ancient Egyptians, Sudanese, prehistoric Saharan, and sub-Saharan Africans. He found that while the Egyptians, Sudanese, and Saharans were closely affiliated with sub-Saharan peoples, those from the northwestern coastline had a very distinct appearance from the rest. Another researcher named SOY Keita (1990) reported similar results, finding that while ancient Egyptians and Sudanese were predominantly of sub-Saharan affinity, northwest Africans were more varied: some did resemble sub-Saharans, but others were more similar to Europeans, and generally the northwest Africans had a morphology intermediate between sub-Saharan and European populations.
Why would northwestern Africans look any different from other Africans? The answer becomes clear when we look at the region's geography. The northwest African coastline is cut off from the rest of the continent not only by the Sahara Desert (which admittedly has only existed for roughly five thousand years) but also the Atlas Mountains. By contrast, the Iberian Peninsula is comparably a stone's throw away---in fact, one can actually see northwest Africa from the top of Gibraltar Rock in southern Spain. It would have therefore been much easier for southern Europeans to populate the area north of the Atlas Mountains than for Africans living further south.
This is not to say that black people were completely absent from the Carthaginian Empire. Not only did Keita find some skulls with sub-Saharan traits in northwest Africa mixed with the more European or intermediate-looking ones as mentioned earlier, but Pittard (1924) does cite one example of a “Negroid” (i.e. sub-Saharan African) skeleton being found in an ancient sarcophagus belonging to a Carthaginian priestess. Furthermore, Bovill and Hallet (1995) report that black Africans were present in the Carthaginian army which invade Sicily in the early fifth century BC, while the Greek writer Diodoros claimed that one Greek military leader campaigning in what is now Tunisia came across people similar in appearance to “Aethiopians” or Sudanese (Mokhtar 1990).
The totality of the evidence indicates that northwestern Africa in ancient times was ethnically heterogeneous, neither wholly black nor completely free of a black presence. If the Barca family ever interbred with the local northwest Africans, then Hannibal or his father Hamilcar having significant black ancestry, while not guaranteed, is a real possibility.
Bibliography
Adams, Cecil. "Was Ludwig van Beethoven of African ancestry?" The Straight Dope. Accessed June 12, 2011. Last modified May 27, 2005. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2598/ was-ludwig-van-beethoven-of-african-ancestry.
Bovill, E. W., and Robin Hallet. The Golden Trade of the Moors: West African Kingdoms in the Fourteenth Century. 2nd ed., 21-2. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1995.
Keita, SOY. "Studies of Ancient Crania from Northern Africa." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 83 (1990): 35-48.
Mokhtar, G. Ancient civilizations of Africa, 427. Vol. 2 of General History of Africa. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990.
Pittard, E. Race and History. New York: Knopf, 1924.
Vermeersch, Pierre M. “Palaeolithic quarrying sites in Upper and Middle Egypt.” Vol. 4 of Egyptian prehistory monographs. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2002.
WorstPreviews.com Staff. "Denzel Washington to Join Vin Diesel in 'Hannibal the Conqueror' Biopic?" WorstPreviews. Accessed June 12, 2011. Last modified August 9, 2010. http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=18607.
Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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Whites play a clever trick on the uninformed; they show them Carthaginian coins and statues of White people, and say that proves the Phoenicians were White. All it proves is that some Romans - not all - were White.
In the spring of 146 B.C. Publius Cornelius Scipio defeated Phoenician Carthage, and burnt it to the ground.
Rome decreed that no house should be built nor crop planted there. But a hundred years later, the city was refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 B.C, and became the capital of the enlarged province of Africa. By the second century A.D, Carthage had become the largest city in the west after Rome. The "New" Roman Carthage became first a famous educational centre, especially for law and rhetoric, and then a focus for Christianity in the west, especially in the time of Tertullian and Cyprian (second and third centuries A.D.). Carthage fell to the Vandals in 439 A.D, and became the capital of their king Gaiseric, but after the victory of Belisarius (Byzantine general) in 533, it remained loyal to the Roman empire in the east, until the Arab conquest at the end of the seventh century, when it was destroyed a second time in 698 A.D.
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Elena Bosch High-Resolution Analysis of Human Y-Chromosome Variation Shows a Sharp Discontinuity and Limited Gene Flow between Northwestern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula Am. J. Hum. Genet. 68:1019–1029, 2001
In the present study we have analyzed 44 Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms in population samples from northwestern (NW) Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, which allowed us to place each chromosome unequivocally in a phylogenetic tree based on 1150 polymorphisms. The most striking results are that contemporary NW African and Iberian populations were found to have originated from distinctly different patrilineages and that the Strait of Gibraltar seems to have acted as a strong (although not complete) barrier to gene flow. In NW African populations, an Upper Paleolithic colonization that probably had its origin in eastern Africa contributed 75% of the current gene pool. In comparison, »78% of contemporary Iberian Y chromosomes originated in an Upper Paleolithic expansion from western Asia, along the northern rim of the Mediterranean basin. Smaller contributions to these gene pools (constituting 13% of Y chromosomes in NW Africa and 10% of Y chromosomes in Iberia) came from the Middle East during the Neolithic and, during subsequent gene flow, from Sub-Saharan to NW Africa. Finally, bidirectional gene flow across the Strait of Gibraltar has been detected: the genetic contribution of European Y chromosomes to the NW African gene pool is estimated at 4%, and NW African populations may have contributed 7% of Iberian Y chromosomes. The Islamic rule of Spain, which began in A.D. 711 and lasted almost 8 centuries, left only a minor contribution to the current Iberian Y-chromosome pool. The high-resolution analysis of the Y chromosome allows us to separate successive migratory components and to precisely quantify each historical layer.
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric:
Why would northwestern Africans look any different from other Africans? The answer becomes clear when we look at the region's geography. The northwest African coastline is cut off from the rest of the continent not only by the Sahara Desert (which admittedly has only existed for roughly five thousand years) but also the Atlas Mountains. By contrast, the Iberian Peninsula is comparably a stone's throw away---in fact, one can actually see northwest Africa from the top of Gibraltar Rock in southern Spain. It would have therefore been much easier for southern Europeans to populate the area north of the Atlas Mountains than for Africans living further south.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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there's like 3 old Carthaginian threads bumped up now- redundant.
who were they? a bunch of damn white people who colonized Tunisia
were there already masses of indigenous people living there? It was probably scarcely populated, nomads coming in and out
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Not so fast with your Quote "bunch of damn white people" The Phoenicians were heavily infused with both Nile valley genes and culture going back to Pepy I and II and occupied for centuries by men of the south and who are these Afrocentrist,that claimed the Carthaginians were wholly blacks,the fact are some considered Hannibal to be black based on the coins with the Elephants on the reverse what they are doing is not letting folks remove the blacks from North Africa or regaled them to the status of slaves or a few wondering herdsmen as Lioness is insinuating above,as far back as the 50ts a French man S.Gsell stated that the majority of the elites buried in Carthage had African and even "Negro" ancestors now that's based off skeletal remains broad featured heads I presume,no nation would go out of it's way to augment it's ruling class with slave foreigners and while there are plenty of I donno Greek looking statues and coins to represent Carthaginians what is not generally publish are these in which we have plenty Why show one without the other unless one wants to lie by omission. And I did not even post the cultural stuff but most y-all saw it already. http://egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=bag&action=display&thread=461 But you are right Lioness the issue have been done to DEATH!! I don't know why Truthcentric bought it back-up as he was part of these conversations in the first place.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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These are Grylli scarabs, an amulet for protective purposes (used in many completely different religions), a seal for officials and later only for decorative purposes.These you cannot determine the demographics of Carthage by these keepsakes.
Another example:
"During this fifteenth century, the dark layers of the onyx were often used so as to show portraits of negroes' heads ; a curious fancy, and one which is rather difficult to explain. The painters of this time seem also to have had a liking for painting negroes. It may possibly have been due to the fact that great personages were fond of having negro servants about them as their favourite attendants ; but no doubt some onyxes lend themselves remarkably well to the production of such heads. "
"Early Roman jewelry style borrowed from established Greek and Etruscan design, new motifs such as the Heracles knot (two loops intertwined) with an apotropaic figurine for averting evil spirits or bad luck was introduced. In 330BC, hoop earrings became fashionable with finial elements of animal heads, figure of Eros, maenads and negroes."
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" it seems probable that they (Carthaginians) imported slaves from the Fezzan(south western region of modern Libya) It was a likely source, for the Garamantes cannot have hunted the Troglodyte Ethiopians except to enslave them. The slave trade with the Fezzan may have been important tot he Carthaginians, but there are no grounds for assuming that it was."
The golden trade of the Moors: West African kingdoms in the fourteenth century By E. W. Bovill, Robin Hallet pp. 21-22
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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^While it's interesting you wantonly say locals consisted of scarce nomads, I recall a study done on Carthage indicated basically 4 in 5 Carthaginians "were indigenous". Take what one will from this. It may be that less than 80% were natives; some Phoenicians may have been mis-diagnosed, as it's not like the Phoenicians / colonizers were necessarily all of a single phenotype.
Then again it may be that more than that were locals. It's not like Libya had been pristinely Libyan up to that point -- various non African groups had had a presence in coastal North Africa for a significant amount of time and divers phenes there had been recounted by I think Greek authors who mentioned lighter skinned "Ethiopians" being there and even some of the people there being "white Ethiopians", presumably being culturally Ethiopians.
Speaking of which, this brings to mind even ancient Egyptian knowledge of an earlier brown people to their West called the Tehhenu and a later, creamy coloured Tamahou.
Pictured:
Aamu (Asiatics), Nehesu (Southerners), Tamahou (I forget what this means, possibly something to do with indigo?),
Romou (the AE themselves, "people of mankind", i.e. Men above others), and back to the Aamu again for the last two.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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But the rendering of Queen Dido in Greek fashion and not during her lifetime is supposed to mean something But images such as this gentleman above is supposed to be decorative and used to ward off evil elephants? But this guy is supposed to be the real deal btw the coins and signet rings are made of Gods,Ancestors and heroes reflective of their populous as pointed out by S.Gsell.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Whatbox: ^While it's interesting you wantonly say locals consisted of scarce nomads, I recall a study done on them indicated basically 4 in 5 were indigenous. Take what one will from this. It may be that less than 80% were natives; it's not like the Phoenicians / colonizers were necessarily all of a single phenotype.
you are wrong. "Locals" by definition are 5 in 5 , 100% indigenous.
However the Carthaginians were not locals.
They were Phoenician immigrants who set up permanent settlements. Tribal people in the area were nomadic.
Did mixing of the Phoenician immigrants and the locals go on? maybe
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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^Local just means people from there. I would be called a local of where I live (U.S.) but indigenous / aboriginal is another story. Learn the meaning of words.
Anyway, I know what you're thinking, which is that Carthaginians just came in and set up camp and that was it, that there were a few scraggly nomads here and there, but I had it there were "indigenous" coastal populations or people there who *were* assimilated, not non- or sparsely- existant.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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Brada if you want to say that artifacts not contemporary to the Phoenician colony known as Carthage which ended in 146 BC are irrelevant then your scarabs sixth century to the mid-fourth century BC are also way later
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Anyway, I know what you're thinking, which is that Carthaginians just came in and set up camp and that was it, that there were a few scraggly nomads here and there, but I had it there were "indigenous" coastal populations or people there who *were* assimilated, not non- or sparsely- existant.
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But the Phonecians themselves while forigners were part Africans or Africanized In the land of their origins Phoenicia What I am certain of is that they did not pick up Nile valley culture in North West Africa they brought it with them along with their partially African genetic and physical. heritage
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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Speaking of which, this brings to mind even ancient Egyptian knowledge of an earlier brown people to their West called the Tehhenu and a later, creamy coloured Tamahou.
Pictured:
Aamu (Asiatics), Nehesu (Southerners), Tamahou (I forget what this means, possibly something to do with indigo?),
Romou (the AE themselves, "people of mankind", i.e. Men above others), and back to the Aamu again for the last two. [/QB]
quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: But the Phonecians themselves while forigners were part Africans or Africanized In the land of their origins Phoenicia What I am certain of is that they did not pick up Nile valley culture in North West Africa they brought it with them along with their partially African genetic and physical. heritage
Your getting to be like Mike111. You post these very vague small objects where the people in them you can't make head or tail of who they are what "race" etc. You put these up as if it proves that the people were half black or something. You can't tell a damn thing from these. The earlier joined head items had a black person. Were they a servant? or Some mythological thing? It's unknown. At least I posted a particular named person, the Queen of the Nation
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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I am not making a case for ethnic images in the above pic but cultural ones when I want to make comparisons on phenotypes I do so unambiguously. Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: I am not making a case for ethnic images in the above pic but cultural ones when I want to make comparisons on phenotypes I do so unambiguously.
^^^^this is not that clear. Could be a negro or could be Kennt G's grandfather:
posted
^Is it a victory that the Albinos were forced to depict this ONE Black man correctly. Or a slap in the face that so many other lies remain.
Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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The Carthage area wasnt empty before the Phoenician migrated there.There were black people living there. The population of Carthage was a mixture of black African and black Phoenician.Brada Anansi great stamps pictures.Firewall great History channel video on Hannibal, they showed him accurately as a black man but in the History channel Battle BC on Ramses II, they showed him as white or semite.
quote: A study conducted in 1970 by M. Chabeuf, the then Doctor of Science from the University of Paris, showed little difference between 17 modern Tunisians, and 68 Punic remains.[97] An analysis the following year on 42 North-West African skulls dating back to Roman times concluded that they were overall similar to modern Berbers and other Mediterranean populations, especially eastern Iberians. They also noted the presence of one outlier in Tunisia who appears to have inherited mechtoid traits, which led them to hypothesize the persistence of such affinities well into the Punic and Roman era.
M. C. Chamla and D Ferembach (1988) in their entry dealing with the craniometric conclusions of Protohistorical Algerians and Punics in the region of Tunisia, found strong sexual dimorphism with male skulls being robust. Mediterranean elements were dominant, but Mechtoid features, as well as 'Negroid' traits were present in some of the samples. Overall, Punic burials showed affinities with Algerians, Roman Era skulls from Tarragona (Spain), Guanches, and to a lesser extent Abydos (XVIIIth dynasty), Etruscans, Bronze Age Syrians (Euphrates) and skulls from Lozere (France). The anthropological position of the Algerian and Punic people when it comes to populations of the Mediterranean Basin agreed quite well with the geographical situation.
Jehan Desanges stated that "In the Punic burial grounds, negroid remains were not rare and there were black auxiliaries in the Carthaginian army who were certainly not Nilotics".[100]
In 1990, Shomarka Keita, a biological anthropologist, had conducted a craniometric study which featured a set of remains from Northern Africa. He examined a sample of 49 Maghreban crania which included skulls from pre-Roman Carthage and concluded that, although they were heterogeneous, many of them showed physical similarities to crania from equatorial Africa, ancient Egypt, and Kush. S.O.Y. Keita's report in 2018, found the pre-Roman Carthaginian series to be intermediate between the Phoenician and Maghrebian. He noted the findings are consistent with an interpretation that it reflects both local and Levantine ancestry due to specific interactions in the ancient period.
In 2016, an ancient Carthaginian individual, who was excavated from a Punic tomb in Byrsa Hill, was found to belong to the rare U5b2c1 maternal haplogroup. The Young Man of Byrsa specimen dates from the late 6th century BCE, and his lineage is believed to represent early gene flow from Iberia to the Maghreb.
Wikipedia
Posts: 2560 | From: Somewhere | Registered: May 2012
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quote:Furthermore,the blacks of the ancient Maghreb were apparently not foreign or a caste. Pittard (1924)notes with surprise the race of the remains found in the Sarcophagus of the Priestess of' Tanit in Carthage, noting them to be Negroid (see also Bertholon and Chantre, 1913).
--S.O.Y Keita, Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa, 1990
Posts: 200 | From: Nibiru | Registered: Mar 2023
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Man, have my views on Carthaginians and ancient NW Africans changed quite a bit from when I wrote that article twelve years ago. We now have aDNA from Iberomaurusians, and it appears that, while they did have some Eurasian ancestry alongside indigenous African, they were still dark-skinned as indicated by retaining ancestral alleles for skin color. Also, there is some evidence from cranial analysis suggesting that many Carthaginians had substantial indigenous (North) African ancestry instead of just being Phoenician.
quote:Abstract Ibiza was permanently settled around the 7th century BCE by founders arriving from west Phoenicia. The founding population grew significantly and reached its height during the 4th century BCE. We obtained nine complete mitochondrial genomes from skeletal remains from two Punic necropoli in Ibiza and a Bronze Age site from Formentara. We also obtained low coverage (0.47X average depth) of the genome of one individual, directly dated to 361–178 cal BCE, from the Cas Molí site on Ibiza. We analysed and compared ancient DNA results with 18 new mitochondrial genomes from modern Ibizans to determine the ancestry of the founders of Ibiza. The mitochondrial results indicate a predominantly recent European maternal ancestry for the current Ibizan population while the whole genome data suggest a significant Eastern Mediterranean component. Our mitochondrial results suggest a genetic discontinuity between the early Phoenician settlers and the island’s modern inhabitants. Our data, while limited, suggest that the Eastern or North African influence in the Punic population of Ibiza was primarily male dominated.
Zalloua et al, 2018: Ancient DNA of Phoenician remains indicates discontinuity in the settlement history of Ibiza Nature
quote: 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.
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