transport: Ancient Carthage

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Ancient Carthage ( KAR-thij; Punic: 𐤒𐤓𐤕𐤟𐤇𐤃𐤔𐤕, lit. 'New City') was an ancient civilization based in North Africa. It grew from a small settlement in present-day Tunisia into the Carthaginian Empire, a major power that dominated the western half of the Mediterranean Sea. Carthage was settled around 814 BC by merchants from Tyre, a leading Phoenician city-state located in present-day Lebanon. In the 7th century BC, following Phoenicia's conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Carthage became independent of its eastern neighbors. Leveraging its naval power, Carthage then began to grow a vast patchwork of colonies, vassals, and satellite states until it was the economic and political hegem…

Evidence: 60 • authority: 72

The present day Republic of Tunisia, al-Jumhuriyyah at-Tunisiyyah, is situated in Northern Africa. Geographically situated between Libya to the east, Algeria to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the north. Tunis is the capital and the largest city (population over 800,000); it is near the ancient site of the city of Carthage. Throughout its recorded history, the physical features and environment of the land of Tunisia have remained fairly constant, although during ancient times more abundant forests grew in the north, and earlier in prehistory the Sahara to the south was not an arid desert. The weather is temperate in the north, which enjoys a Mediterranean climate with mild rainy winte…

Evidence: 54 • authority: 92

Early Holocenic and Historic mtDNA African Signatures in the Iberian Peninsula: The Andalusian Region as a Paradigm.. Determining the timing, identity and direction of migrations in the Mediterranean Basin, the role of "migratory routes" in and among regions of Africa, Europe and Asia, and the effects of sex-specific behaviors of population movements have important implications for our understanding of the present human genetic diversity. A crucial component of the Mediterranean world is its westernmost region. Clear features of transcontinental ancient contacts between North African and Iberian populations surrounding the maritime region of Gibraltar Strait have been identified from archeo…

Evidence: 44 • authority: 72

Phoenicia was an ancient Semitic-speaking thalassocratic civilization that originated in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon. At its height between 1100 and 200 BC, Phoenician civilization spread across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula, and Africa (Canary Islands). The Phoenicians came to prominence following the collapse of most major cultures during the Late Bronze Age. They developed an expansive maritime trade network that lasted over a millennium, becoming the dominant commercial power for much of classical antiquity. Phoenician trade also helped facilitate the exchange of cultures, ideas, and knowledge between major cradles o…

Evidence: 44 • authority: 72

The city of Carthage was founded in the 9th century BC on the coast of Northwest Africa, in what is now Tunisia, as one of a number of Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean created to facilitate trade from the city of Tyre on the coast of what is now Lebanon. The name of both the city and the wider republic that grew out of it, Carthage developed into a significant trading empire throughout the Mediterranean. The date from which Carthage can be counted as an independent power cannot exactly be determined, and probably nothing distinguished Carthage from the other Phoenician colonies in Northwest Africa and the Mediterranean during 800–700 BC. By the end of the 7th century BC,…

Evidence: 39 • authority: 72

The Achaemenid Empire (, ə-KEE-mə-nid; Old Persian: 𐎧𐏁𐏂, Xšāça, lit. 'The Empire' or 'The Kingdom') was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. At peak, its territorial extent was roughly 5.5 million square kilometres (2.1 million square miles), making it the largest empire of its time. Based in the Iranian plateau, it stretched from the Balkans and Cyrenaica in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, including Anatolia, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, the Levant, the South Caucasus, parts of Eastern Arabia, and large parts of Central Asia. By the 7th century BC, the region of Persis, located in the southwestern part of the Iranian plateau, had be…

Evidence: 39 • authority: 80

Ancient Trade Routes from Carthage into the Sahara

Evidence: 34 • authority: 72

This article details the history of Syracuse from its origins to the present day. Located in Sicily, the city was founded in the 8th century BC by a group of Greek colonists from Corinth. It became a prominent polis of significant importance, ranked among the greatest metropolises of the ancient world, and was the birthplace of notable figures such as Epicharmus, Archimedes, and many others. It also hosted influential personalities such as Aeschylus and Plato. Conquered by the Romans in 212 BC, Syracuse served as the capital of Roman Sicily. It remained important under the Byzantine rule, even briefly becoming the empire's capital from 663 to 669 until the assassination of Emperor Constans…

Evidence: 34 • authority: 88

Aristotle: Constitution of Carthage. The chief document that deals with the Constitution of Carthage is the eleventh chapter of the second book of Aristotle’s Politics (ca. 335–323 BCE). This work is a response to the political philosophy of his teacher, Plato, and furthers the attempt to describe an ideal organization for a national government. In Politics Aristotle develops his idea of how cities should function from his discussion of how people ought to live, giving real-world examples of well-governed cities (Sparta, Crete, and Carthage), whose constitutions are balanced between various forms of government. Unexpectedly, in view of the well-known prejudice of Greeks and of Aristotle, in…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The extensive trade networks of the Ancient Maya contributed largely to the success of their civilization spanning three millennia. Maya royal control and the wide distribution of foreign and domestic commodities for both population sustenance and social affluence are hallmarks of the Maya visible throughout much of the iconography found in the archaeological record. In particular, moderately long-distance trade of foreign commodities from the Caribbean and Gulf Coasts provided the larger inland Maya cities with the resources they needed to sustain settled population levels in the several thousands. Though the ruling class essentially controlled the trade economy, a middle merchant class su…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Numidia (Latin: Regnum Numidiae) was the ancient Libyan kingdom of the indigenous Numidian Berbers in Northwest Africa during the Hellenistic period. Initially comprising the northern part of what is now Algeria, Numidia expanded into western modern Tunisia and Libya. The polity was originally divided between the Massylii state in the east, with its capital at Cirta, and the Masaesyli state in the west, with its capital at Siga. During the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), Masinissa, king of the Massylii, defeated Syphax of the Masaesyli to unify Numidia into the first unified Berber state in North Africa. Initially an independent state and an ally of Rome, the kingdom later alternated between…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Silk Road was ancient network of trade routes that connected many communities of Eurasia(Europe and Asia) by land and sea, stretching from the Mediterranean basin in the west to the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago in the east. Its main eastern end was in the Chinese city of Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an, China) and its main western end was in the Greek city of Antioch (modern-day Antakya, Turkey). It came into existence in the 2nd century BCE, when Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty was in power, and lasted until the 15th century CE, when the Ottoman Empire blocked off all the trade routes with Europe after it captured Constantinople and thereby conquered the Byzantine Empire. Thi…