Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestors
More On Article
- The bioarchaeology of tobacco use: An exploratory study of nicotine and cotinine detection in tooth dentine.
- Buca della Iena and Grotta del Capriolo: New chronological, lithic, and faunal analyses of two late Mousterian sites in Central Italy
- New Publication by HEAS Member Offers New Insights into Ancient Roman Settlement Patterns in Austria
- Home is where my villa is: a machine learning-based predictive suitability map for Roman features in Northern Noricum (ca. 50–500 CE/Lower Austria/AUT)
- HEAS Keynote with Necmi Karul Takes Place in Vienna
Ringbauer, H., Salman-Minkov, A., Regev, D., Olalde, I., Peled, T., Sineo, L., Falsone, G., van Dommelen, P., Mittnik, A., Lazaridis, I., Pettener, D., Bofill, M., Mezquida, A., Costa, B., Jiménez, H., Smith, P., Vai, S., Modi, A., Shaus, A., Callan, K., Curtis, E., Kearns, A., Lawson, A.M., Mah, M., Micco, A., Oppenheimer, J., Qiu, L., Stewardson, K., Workman, J.N., Márquez-Grant, N., Sáez Romero, A.M., Lavado Florido, M.L., Jiménez-Arenas, J.M., Toro Moyano, I.J., Viguera, E., Padilla, J.S., Chamizo, S.L., Marques-Bonet, T., Lizano, E., Riaza, A.R., Olivieri, F., Toti, P., Giuliana, V., Barash, A., Carmel, L., Boaretto, E., Faerman, M., Lucci, M., La Pastina, F., Nava, A., Genchi, F., Del Vais, C., Lauria, G., Meli, F., Sconzo, P., Catalano, G., Cilli, E., Fariselli, A.C., Fontani, F., Luiselli, D., Culleton, B.J., Mallick, S., Rohland, N., Nigro, L., Coppa, A., Caramelli, D., Pinhasi, R., Lalueza-Fox, C., Gronau, I., Reich, D., 2025. Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestors. Nature.
Abstract
The maritime Phoenician civilization from the Levant transformed the entire Mediterranean during the first millennium bce. However, the extent of human movement between the Levantine Phoenician homeland and Phoenician–Punic settlements in the central and western Mediterranean has been unclear in the absence of comprehensive ancient DNA studies. Here, we generated genome-wide data for 210 individuals, including 196 from 14 sites traditionally identified as Phoenician and Punic in the Levant, North Africa, Iberia, Sicily, Sardinia and Ibiza, and an early Iron Age individual from Algeria. Levantine Phoenicians made little genetic contribution to Punic settlements in the central and western Mediterranean between the sixth and second centuries bce, despite abundant archaeological evidence of cultural, historical, linguistic and religious links4. Instead, these inheritors of Levantine Phoenician culture derived most of their ancestry from a genetic profile similar to that of Sicily and the Aegean. Much of the remaining ancestry originated from North Africa, reflecting the growing influence of Carthage5. However, this was a minority contributor of ancestry in all of the sampled sites, including in Carthage itself. Different Punic sites across the central and western Mediterranean show similar patterns of high genetic diversity. We also detect genetic relationships across the Mediterranean, reflecting shared demographic processes that shaped the Punic world.