[SunkenCiv]

Oddly enough, this 2001 piece showed up in today's standard search:

Google

[SunkenCiv]

Very interesting piece from 2001 regarding both the era of the Roman Empire in Africa and modern northern Africa. I'm going to ping the Middle East list pingmeisters, I'm sure it will also be of interest to them.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[SunkenCiv]

kaplan roman africa site:freerepublic.com

Google

[RightWhale]

Carthage and Rome had a trade agreement like NAFTA long before the Punic Wars. The early history of Rome is mostly heroic myth.

[colorado tanker]

"Because urbanization in northern Tunisia has always been more extensive, going back to ancient Carthage," Abdelbaki Hermassi explains, "sedentary life is older here, and tribal identity based on nomadism correspondingly weak. Thus the centralized state is more deeply embedded." Regimes in Algeria and Libya never succeeded in weakening tribal identities, so governments there have been feeble unless they resorted to cruelty.

[wildbill]

Long after the Punic wars the Roman general and dictator Marius settled his legions in the area. The usual payoff at the end of service for Roman armies in those days was land.

A colonizing force of veteran soldiers in N. Africa made for a good quiet colony.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.bib-arch.org/aoso99/aoso99dest.html

Destinations: Kerkouane, Tunisia

On an eroding stretch of Tunisia’s coastline, a Punic fishing community conjures up Africa’s great lost civilization... If you want to walk through the streets of a Punic city, you must go to Kerkouane instead. A sleepy little coastal city about 75 miles from Carthage, on Tunisia’s Cape Bon Peninsula, Kerkouane was founded around 550 B.C. and managed to survive as a Punic city for 300 years. The city was eventually sacked and partially destroyed by the Romans during the First Punic War (264-241 B.C.), but for some unknown reason the Romans never rebuilt or reoccupied Kerkouane. Its remains lay undisturbed, just below the surface of the earth, until they were accidentally discovered by vacationing archaeologists in 1952... Since 1976, the site has been excavated by one of Tunisia’s leading archaeologists, M’hamed Hassine Fantar. In his 22 years of digging, Fantar has unearthed close to 22 acres of the city’s residential area, including an intact sanctuary, several city streets, parts of walls, the town gates and a whole host of smaller artifacts and objects... Perhaps because of its remote and inhospitable location, Kerkouane never achieved the size or grandeur of other Phoenician capitols like Carthage or Tyre. Instead it remained a city on a human scale, in some ways simple and modest. At its height it was home to about 1,200 people.

[SunkenCiv]

Five Suspected Islamic Extremists Arrested in Spain
Friday, March 07, 2003

Five suspected Islamic extremists were arrested Friday at the request of a judge probing a deadly Tunisia synagogue bombing linked to Al Qaeda, officials said. That April bombing outside the Ghriba synagogue on the resort island of Djerba -- in which a truck laden was gas tanks was detonated -- killed at least 19 people, including 14 German tourists. The Ghriba synagogue is believed to be the site of Africa's oldest synagogue -- built about 2,500 years ago.