So How Far Did The Phoenicians Really Go In The Region?

In one of the early adventures of Asterix and Obelix, a Phoenician trade ship takes the world’s funniest Celtic warriors from the Gaul’s last village free from Roman rule to Queen Cleopatra in the land of the Nile. Now, of course this is but an image in a comic book, but still, is it possible that the Phoenicians, generally known as the greatest seafarers of antiquity, actually reached Brittany, or even further?

There’s no doubt that Phoenicians were well established all over the Mediterranean. Archeological remains prove they lived in a vast network of cities at Cyprus, Malta, Sicily, Spain and the African coast, where Carthage became the powerbroker of the western Mediterranean till the rise of Rome.

Archeological finds take us even further, past Gibraltar’s “Pillars of Hercules,” to Phoenician settlements on the Atlantic coast of Morocco and Portugal. But that’s it. So far no physical proof of any further exploits has been found. However, there are some spectacular written sources.

First of all, there are two Latin texts that relate of the journey of Himilco, who in the 5th century BC sailed from Carthage around Iberia (Spain) to northern Europe. According to these sources, Himilco did not go ashore in Brittany to pick up any Celtic warriors, but crossed the Channel to Great Britain.

“It’s a story not that unlikely,” said Helen Sadr, professor of Archeology at the American University of Beirut. “The Phoenicians always had a keen interest in precious metals and Britain was renowned for its tin, which was already traded over land. What’s more, finds in Britain prove close contacts with Iberia, which for centuries was a colony of Carthage. Combine that with the Phoenician settlements found in Portugal and a journey to England is not that far-fetched.”

A second story about Phoenician exploits stems from the Greek “father of history” Herodotus. In a chapter on the world’s (three) continents in “Histories,” he writes that “as for Libya (Africa), we know it to be washed on all sides by the sea, except where it’s attached to Egypt. This discovery was made by Necos, the Egyptian king, who … sent to sea a number of ships manned by Phoenicians, with orders to make it to the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) and return to Egypt.”

According to Herodotus the Phoenicians sailed south from the Red Sea. Every autumn they went ashore, sowed corn and waited till it was ripe to set to sail again. It took them three years to get back to Egypt. “On their return,” Herodotus writes, “they declared I for my part do not believe them that in sailing around Libya they had the sun upon their right hand.”

It should be noted that Herodotus, who was born in the 5th century BC, is also known as “the father of lies” and indeed some of his stories, such as on the man-sized desert ants of Persia, are just fables. He himself said that “my business is to record what people say, I’m by no means bound to believe it.” What furthermore speaks in his favor, is that no one believed his accounts of Amazons and a man-made canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, until archeologists proved both actually existed.

To the Greek historian the changed position of the sun in the southern hemisphere was just too much to believe. “It is precisely for that remark,” said Sadr, “that most scholars believe the story is probably true.”

Third, there’s the journey of Hanno, which stems from a Greek text of the 10th century AD. That’s a bit late for a trip that took place some 1,500 years earlier, yet what makes the text plausible are the incredible details described, which were not generally known in 1,000 AD. According to the text, which is said to be a translation from a much older Phoenician tablet, Hanno set sail from Carthage with 60 ships.
After sailing beyond the Pillars of Hercules, Hanno founded several cities on the coast of today’s Morocco. They passed a river called the Lixos, took translators aboard and sailed for days along a large desert coast until they reached a small island called Cerne, which was situated in the mouth of a large river.
According to Hanno, Cerne was as far from the Pillars as is Carthage.

Most scholars agree that the description fits Somalia, and several other texts confirm that the Phoenicians used to trade with Cerne. Sailing onto the river, Hanno and his men saw “mountains crowded with savages clad in skins of wild beasts” and reached a second big river “teeming with crocodiles and hippos.”

They returned to Cerne and sailed further south. Passing the coast, which is described as “mountainous, clad with trees and inhabited by Ethiopians” they reach a large bay where they went ashore. “By day we could see nothing but forest, but by night we saw many fires burning and we heard the sound of flutes and the beating cymbals and drums, and a great din of voices. Fear came upon us and our soothsayers bade us to leave.”

And so they did. Further south they reached a “fiery coast with great streams of fire and lava pouring down into the sea.” The dubbed the volcano “Chariot of the Gods” and continued their journey, till they reached another bay with an “island full of savages.”

“By far the greater number were women with shaggy bodies whom our interpreters called gorillas.” They were unable to catch any of the men, but caught three women, “who bit and mangled those who carried them off.” Hanno’s men decided to kill them and take but their skin to Carthage.

The lively description of the green African coast most probably refers to Cape Verde and Gambia, while the volcano can only be in Guinea or even Cameroon. Again, seeing the settlements in Morocco, and the many existing references to Cerne, most scholars believe the story is true. If so, the many Lebanese living in West Africa are perhaps but following in the footsteps of their ancie- nt ancestors.

Unfortunately, as both Tyre and Carthage were destroyed to the ground, the main sources of Phoenician civilization were forever lost to mankind. We can only imagine what our view of history would be, if the Greek and Romans had done a less thorough job. Some say, the Phoenicians also sailed to India and even reached America.
Now, the latter is most probably a bit too far-fetched, but fact is, that even if only half the stories above is true, the history and map of the world, both of which are predominantly European, may have to be reviewed considerably. So, the Street of Magelaen, named after the Portuguese explorer, south of the African continent may have to be called Phoenician Street.

I was thinking the same thing when I posted the map above. Look at the map where it says Olmec and Zapotec...seems like a good spot to haul trade goods across, huh? (Even a river there that could go most of the way across too.)

Yes, it seems like that would be a pretty efficient place to set up a trade route. As I'm thinking about the logistics of this, it occurs to me that if Central America was being used as an international trade route this way, there would have been a series of strategically-placed ports at key areas in the Pacific islands, along the American coasts, in the Caribbean, and on Africa's western and southern coasts. I wonder if an archaeological survey of those areas would provide any evidence of an international trade route contemporary with the Olmecs? I started looking into the history of Pacific colonization recently and here is a piece of information that seems relevant to considering the Pacific end of such a possible trade route:

Austronesian Expansion - Taiwan 4,000 BC

http://www.ualberta.ca/~vmitchel/rev3.html

Austronesian Expansion - Taiwan 4,000 BC

By 5,000 BC an especially potent and versatile culture combining fishing and gardening had developed on the south coast of China. As well as growing their food on land, these maritime gardeners were accomplished at fishing the waters in the Straits of Taiwan from boats with hooks and nets. Between 4,000 and 3,000 BC, these fishermen-farmers crossed the 150 km of the Straits and settled on Taiwan.

It is important to note that the fishermen-farmers who crossed the straits to Taiwan were not the Sino-Tibetan speaking Han Chinese who today make up the great majority of the Chinese population. Linguistic evidence from Taiwan suggests that they spoke an Austronesian language closely related to the Tai-Kadai language family that is the dominant language group today in Laos, Thailand and the north and east of Burma.

On Taiwan, the Austronesian speaking fishermen-farmers honed their sea-faring skills. They soon embarked on one of the most astonishing and extensive colonizations in human history known as the Austronesian expansion. By about 2,500 BC, one group, and just one group of Austronesian speakers from Taiwan had ventured to northern Luzon in the Philippines and settled there. The archaeological record from the Cagayan Valley in northern Luzon shows that they brought with them the same set of stone tools and pottery they had in Taiwan. The descendants of this group spread their language and culture through the Indo-Malayan archipelago as far west as Madagascar off the east coast of Africa and as far east as Hawaii and Easter Island in the central Pacific Ocean.

For the most part, the Austronesians encountered unoccupied coasts and islands. Where they met hunting and gathering cultures, their horticultural productivity and population growth soon overwhelmed the aboriginal occupants. All the surviving Aeta populations in the Philippines speak Austronesian languages. Where they met established agrarian cultures, such as along the coasts of Vietnam (Champa) and Indo-China, their incursions were limited.

The speed of the Austronesian expansion was also a consequence of their maritime culture. Under the pressure of an expanding population, adventurous colonizers would prefer to settle new lands on coasts and islands before pressing inland and away from the sea. Furthermore, the Austronesian kinship system gave higher status, prestige and authority to the lineages most closely related to the society's founder. Austronesian culture put a premium on founding new colonies that gave an additional incentive to continued expansion. As it was, there were many new coasts and islands available for occupation and settlement.

Over the next thousand years to 1,500 BC, the Austronesians spread south through the Philippines to the Celebes, the Moluccas, northern Borneo and eastern Java. One branch went east from the Moluccan Island of Halmahera about 1,600 BC to colonize eastern Melanesia (1,200 BC) and Micronesia (500 BC). The migration had continued well into Polynesia by 0 AD and on to Hawaii and Easter Island by 500 AD. The Austronesians finally reached the last uninhabited land on earth, New Zealand, sometime around 1,300 AD.

Other Austronesians continued west through Borneo and Java to Sumatra and settled the coasts of the Malay peninsula and southern Vietnam by 500 BC. From Sumatra and the Malay peninsula, they learned to master the semi-annual winds of the Indian Ocean monsoons. Around 100 AD, they crossed the Bay of Bengal and made contacts with Sri Lanka and southern India. The western branch of the Austronesian expansion reached its furthest extent by 500 AD plying the monsoons to colonize Madagascar.

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