Rethinking the Phoenicians: A Legacy of Cultural Exchange, Not Conquest

For centuries, historians assumed that the Phoenicians, those legendary seafarers from the Levant, spread their influence through waves of colonists. From the Levant to Carthage and across the Mediterranean, it was believed that people physically moved, bringing their language, gods, and ideas with them. But a new study from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, published in April 2025, tells a different, and arguably more fascinating, story.

In collaboration with Harvard University, researchers analyzed the DNA of 210 ancient individuals buried in 14 Phoenician and Punic archaeological sites across the Mediterranean, from Lebanon to Sicily and Ibiza. Their findings were unexpected: there was very little genetic contribution from Levantine Phoenician populations to Punic communities further west, even in Carthage, which was once the heart of the Punic world.

So how did Phoenician culture travel so far and wide?

The study, led by geneticist Harald Ringbauer and co-directed by Johannes Krause and David Reich, suggests it wasn’t migration but cultural exchange that fueled the Phoenicians’ expansion. In other words, people in places like Carthage weren’t necessarily descended from Phoenicians. Instead, they adopted the culture through trade, intermarriage, and local adaptation. This challenges the assumption that cultural presence equals genetic continuity.

Even more striking, the Punic world turned out to be a genetic mosaic. Individuals in Punic cities had ancestry linked to the Aegean, Sicily, and North Africa. In fact, researchers even discovered a pair of second cousins buried on opposite sides of the Mediterranean, one in Sicily, the other in North Africa.

What does this mean for how we think about identity and influence?

The Phoenicians remind us that culture isn’t always a product of conquest or colonization. It can spread through ideas, commerce, and shared stories. This study reframes the Phoenician legacy not as one of dominance by bloodline, but as one of intellectual and cultural resonance.

This research is a reminder that anthropology, especially when combined with genetic science, can reshape not only what we know about the past, but also how we imagine the future.