DNA Captured From 2,500-Year-Old Phoenician
Analysis of the ancient man's DNA reveal he had European ancestry.
Researchers have sequenced the complete
mitochondrial genome of a 2,500-year-old Phoenician, showing the ancient
man had European ancestry.
This is the first ancient DNA to be obtained from Phoenician remains.
Known
as “Ariche,” the young man came from Byrsa, a walled citadel above the
harbor of ancient Carthage. Byrsa was attacked by the Roman general
Scipio Aemilianus “Africanus” in the Third Punic War. It was destroyed
by Rome in 146 B.C.
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Ariche’s
remains were discovered in 1994 on the southern flank of Bursa hill
when a man planting trees fell into the ancient grave.
Analysis
of the skeleton revealed the man died between the age of 19 and 24, had
a rather robust physique and was 1.7 meters (5’6″) tall. He may have
belonged to the Carthaginian elite, as he was buried with gems, scarabs,
amulets and other artifacts.
Now genetic research carried
out by a team co-led by Lisa Matisoo-Smith at New Zealand’s University
of Otago has shown the man belonged to a rare European haplogroup —
known as U5b2cl — that likely links his maternal ancestry to the North
Mediterranean coast, probably on the Iberian Peninsula.
Published
in the journal PLOS ONE, the findings provide the earliest evidence of
the European mitochondrial haplogroup U5b2cl in North Africa, dating its
arrival to at least the late sixth century BC.
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“U5b2cl
is considered to be one of the most ancient haplogroups in Europe and
is associated with hunter-gatherer populations there,” Matisoo-Smith
said.
She noted that mitochondrial group was found in two
ancient hunter-gatherers recovered from an archaeological site in
north-western Spain.
“While a wave of farming peoples from
the Near East replaced these hunter-gatherers, some of their lineages
may have persisted longer in the far south of the Iberian peninsula and
on off-shore islands and were then transported to the melting pot of
Carthage in North Africa via Phoenician and Punic trade networks,”
Matisoo-Smith said.
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The haplogroup is very rare in modern populations today. In Europe, it appears at levels of less than 1 percent.
“Interestingly,
our analysis showed that Ariche’s mitochondrial genetic makeup most
closely matches that of the sequence of a particular modern-day
individual from Portugal,” she added.
On the contrary, mitochondrial DNA of 47 modern Lebanese people showed none were of the U5b2cl lineage.
Thought
to have originated from what is now Lebanon, the Phoenicians were
seafarers and traders who spread their culture across the Mediterranean
and west to the Iberian Peninsula where they established settlements and
trading posts. The city of Carthage in Tunisia, North Africa, was first
established as a Phoenician port and later became the center for Punic
trade.
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Despite
the significant impact of their culture on Western civilization — they
introduced the first alphabetic writing system – the Phoenicians faded
from history after being defeated in a series of wars with Rome. They
then remained somewhat elusive.
“We still know little about
the Phoenicians themselves, except for the likely biased accounts by
their Roman and Greek rivals,” Matisoo-Smith said.
“Hopefully
our findings and other continuing research will cast further light on
the origins and impact of Phoenician peoples and their culture,” she
added.
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