Phoenicia

[[File:Phoenicia map-en.svg|right|thumb|165px|Where it was at.]]{{historynav}}
'''Phoenicia''' was a [[Middle East|Middle Eastern]] Semitic civilisation based around modern-day [[Lebanon]] from around 1500 BCE to the 1<sup>st</sup> century BCE. Its inhabitants were great seafarers and travelled the Mediterranean, and further afield &mdash; although exactly how far is the subject of a large amount of [[woo]] and [[pseudohistory]].

They founded Carthage in north [[Africa]], pioneered celestial navigation, invented the first [[alphabet]], and continued [[Human_sacrifice#Human_sacrifice_in_Carthage|human sacrifice]] long after it had become unfashionable. But they were badly beaten up by the [[Persian]]s under Cyrus the Great, and then by Alexander the Great, before becoming part of the [[Roman Empire]].

==Voyages==
[[File:PhoenicianTrade.png|left|thumb|200px|We can be pretty sure the Phoenicians really did go to these places.]]
===Mediterranean and north Africa===
We have good [[Archaeology|archaeological]] [[evidence]] that they traded the length of the Mediterranean, from [[Ancient Egypt|Egypt]] to the Strait of Gibraltar. They seem to have also traded up the Atlantic coast of Iberia ([[Spain]] and [[Portugal]]), around the coast of Africa as far as the Gulf of Guinea, and down the Red Sea to what is now [[Somalia]] (or what was Somalia till recently).<ref name=wp>{{wpa|Phoenicia}}</ref>

One [[DNA]] study has shown that as many as 1 in 17 men in the Mediterranean could trace their male ancestry to a Phoenician.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7700356.stm "DNA legacy of ancient seafarers"], ''[[BBC]]'', 31 October 2008</ref>

===England===
There are claims that they visited Cornwall in southwest [[England]] to purchase tin, although the evidence for this is not certain.<ref>[http://codexceltica.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/phoenician-question.html The 'Phoenician' Question], ''Codex Celtica'', 22 Nov 2009</ref> The [[Greeks]] made vague references to the {{wpl|Cassiterides}} or Tin Islands off the west coast of Europe, but the descriptions don't match any actual geography. There is better evidence that the Phoenicians traded tin on the Atlantic coast of Iberia, which is much less of a journey.<ref>[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jEIv-GgyLn8C&lpg=PA87&ots=TYLA4qAUaz&dq=phoenicians%20trading%20tin&pg=PA87#v=onepage&q=phoenicians%20trading%20tin&f=false Handbook to Life in Prehistoric Europe], Jane McIntosh, p. 87</ref>

Claims of Phoenician visits to [[United Kingdom|Britain]] are also connected to legends that [[Joseph of Arimathea]] and that [[Jesus]] visited England (see: [[Lost years of Jesus]].)

Such connections were eagerly claimed because the Phoenicians were seen by 19<sup>th</sup>-century British imperialists as precursors of the [[British Empire]], being arch-capitalists, avid merchants, and rulers of the waves.<ref>[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1469-8219.00027/abstract The appropriation of the Phoenicians in British imperial ideology], Champion, Timothy, ''Nations and Nationalism'', 7:4 (Oct 2001)</ref>

===Ireland===
According to myth, the Phoenicians visited [[Ireland]], where {{wpl|Fénius Farsaid}} (a.k.a. Fenius Farsa, etc.) having tried to build the [[Tower of Babel]] supposedly invented the Ogham alphabet and Gaelic language. This is most likely [[bullshit|bollocks]].

===Circumnavigating Africa===
The first circumnavigation of Africa round the Cape of Good Hope is generally attributed to Bartolomeu Dias in 1488. [[Herodotus]] claimed that the Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa, and between 2007 and 2010, British sailor Philip Beale sailed a Phoenician-style boat around Africa to prove such a feat was possible.<ref name=bealecnn>[http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/28/world/americas/phoenician-christopher-columbus-america-sailboat/ Transatlantic crossing: Did Phoenicians beat Columbus by 2000 years?], CNN, 5 Mar 2013</ref> Even if it's possible for someone who knows the way, that does not prove the Phoenicians actually did it. They would have to trade with the natives for food and avoid both shipwreck and murder, without any of their own trading posts to supply them.

===America===
Other dubious theories, advanced by fringe crackpots from the late 18<sup>th</sup> century onwards, have them visiting the [[America]]s. Ezra Stiles believed petroglyphs on Dighton Rock at Berkley, [[Massachusetts]], were [[Hebrew]]; similar ideas fed into [[Mormonism]]. An inscription discovered at Paraíba, [[Brazil]] in the 1870s was also believed to be of Semitic origin. Phoenician coins allegedly found in the Americas have been proven to be forgeries.<ref name=wpphoenamerica>{{wpa|Theory of Phoenician discovery of the Americas}}</ref>

More recently, Mark McMenamin has claimed that Phoenician coins show a map including the Americas.<ref name=wpphoenamerica/> The actual map is very small and incredibly indistinct<ref>[http://blogoftheboss.com/five-undeniable-proofs-phoenicians-discovered-america/ Five undeniable proofs Phoenicians discovered America], Blog of the Boss</ref> and it could equally well be the Canary Islands, Britain, the Azores, or many other things.

In contrast, Glenn Markoe and Ronald H. Fritze have noted the absence of evidence: if there was a lasting settlement such as that the Vikings left in [[Canada]], we would have found something, so although there could have been brief contact, such as by shipwrecked sailors, it is unlikely.<ref name=wpphoenamerica/>

Following his circumnavigation of Africa, Philip Beale planned to cross the Atlantic in a Phoenician boat,<ref name=bealecnn/> but there doesn't seem to be evidence that he ever managed it, with the difficulty in getting funding and the risk of being dead. Captain Beale made landfall in the Dominican Republic on 31st December 2019 after 39 days at sea.

==See also==
* [[Pre-Columbian contact hypotheses]]
* [[Hyperdiffusionism]]

==References==
{{Reflist|2|90%}}

[[Category:Pseudohistory]]

Categories: Pseudohistory