Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00.
00:05Hidden beneath the Greek and Roman ruins of modern Lebanon
00:09lie the remains of an ancient civilization almost lost to history.
00:17Beginning in 1200 BC and lasting for a thousand years,
00:22this civilization dominated a vital part of the ancient world.
00:26But unlike their rivals in Egypt, Greece and Rome,
00:30they had almost no land empire.
00:33Instead, theirs was an empire of the waves.
00:40They ruled the most important body of water known to the ancients,
00:44the Mediterranean Sea.
00:47They were the most skilled and audacious seafarers of their time.
00:52An enigmatic race of mariners known as the Phoenicians.
00:59The Phoenicians were the first great shipping tycoons.
01:02Their vessels were coveted by their ancient rivals.
01:06And they developed a phonetic alphabet that influenced the way we write today.
01:11But their success made them the envy of the ancient world.
01:16And that envy led to their destruction.
01:20The Greeks and Romans crushed the Phoenicians.
01:24And most damning of all, rewrote their history.
01:28Leaving dark, slanted accounts of the Phoenicians to live on.
01:33Ancient texts describe them as a morally corrupt race of people who prostituted their daughters
01:42and butchered their infant children to placate their gods.
01:47What is the real story of the Phoenicians?
01:54And who are the modern people who can boast their legacy?
01:59Now, more than 2,000 years after they disappeared,
02:04two high-tech quests begin to find one of the most elusive peoples of the ancient past.
02:10First, a search for ancient Phoenician ships using revolutionary machines deep beneath the sea they once ruled.
02:20The ancient Phoenicians were the greatest mariners of their time.
02:24I would have loved to sail with them.
02:27And a second, using the latest genetic tools in a bid to find them within the blood of the modern people of the Mediterranean.
02:36Archaeologists may dig in the dirt, we dig in the blood.
02:39At sea and on land, can new technology and new science finally solve the mystery of the ancient Phoenicians?
03:09Lebanon. This sliver of a country teeters between mountains and the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.
03:25Once known as the Levant, it was the homeland of the Phoenicians.
03:31Along this ancient coast, in the town of Tyre, a 71-year-old boatbuilder named Abouliez labors to connect with his Phoenician past.
03:43And he is doing it by building a Phoenician ship.
03:49The Phoenicians have a special connection to the sea.
03:55When we launch this ship, we'll feel it.
03:59For 20 years, Abu dreamed of this ship.
04:02Finally, a year ago, he and his son started to build it based on his idea of what a Phoenician ship would have looked like.
04:10Phoenician ships were legendary throughout the Mediterranean.
04:17Now the men of Tyre are about to make one version of that legend come alive.
04:24For Abu, it is a ship of reconciliation.
04:31A way to bring together Muslims and Christians from a country long divided by religious strife.
04:39When this ship goes into the sea, it will be like a bride entering a church, God willing.
04:45Abu's remarkable effort reveals a man and an entire community
04:53and the firm grip of the Phoenician mystique.
04:58But how could an ancient people who still wield so much mythic power remain so obscured?
05:08We do know that Phoenicia was really a string of city-states rather than a unified kingdom.
05:14And that from these ports, they colonized the Mediterranean.
05:18But there's much that we don't know.
05:22Finding answers will take researchers to some surprising places.
05:27More than 600 miles away from Lebanon, in Istanbul, Turkey, scientist Spencer Wells takes up the quest.
05:37Spencer is a geneticist with an archaeologist's passion.
05:42But instead of plying the earth for clues, he plies our DNA.
05:47He is on his way to meet someone who may divulge a secret about the Phoenicians.
05:56His name is King Tabnet.
05:58500 years before the birth of Christ, he ruled over Sidon, one of Phoenicia's most powerful seaports.
06:06King Tabnet's DNA may help Spencer discover a Phoenician genetic marker, the genes that make a Phoenician a Phoenician.
06:15Can we remove this and have a look?
06:18I use genetics, DNA, to study history.
06:21DNA is a blueprint.
06:23It's the way you reproduce yourself.
06:25You pass it on to the next generation.
06:27But it also provides us with a historical document, a way to look back in time.
06:32Could people living in Lebanon today be related to a long-dead Phoenician king?
06:37To find out, Spencer will need to take a piece of Tabnet home to look into his past.
06:46It's like being a voyeur.
06:51This is someone who was alive 2,500 years ago.
06:55And now we've pulled him out and we're going to chop a piece off of him and hopefully analyze his DNA.
07:01And his secrets will be revealed with any luck.
07:07Condition is not bad, isn't it?
07:09It's very good.
07:10Very good.
07:11There's quite a bit of tissue.
07:16There are some curious things about King Tabnet.
07:23He was buried in a borrowed Egyptian sarcophagus and mummified in the Egyptian style.
07:32Why was a powerful king from a great civilization buried in the hand-me-downs of another culture?
07:38The Phoenicians controlled the trade networks in the Mediterranean.
07:43And they absorbed other cultures.
07:45Roman culture, Greek culture, Egyptian culture.
07:48And spread it as well.
07:50So they were conduits.
07:51That's part of what makes them so enigmatic.
07:54How do you define a people who don't have, in a sense, a core?
07:59It's part of the reason why it's so difficult to trace them archaeologically,
08:02which is why we're resorting to DNA evidence.
08:05One of the best places for Spencer to get his hands on the king's DNA are his teeth.
08:12The tooth hopefully will have uncontaminated DNA hidden inside that will give us that insight back into the past.
08:19The tooth's enamel can act like an airtight tomb, protecting what Spencer hopes will be pure DNA.
08:26Okay, here it comes.
08:36Okay.
08:37It's in good condition.
08:39The enamel is still intact, so it's been sealed.
08:43With any luck we can clean it off and actually get some DNA out.
08:49If we get a DNA result from this, it's going to give us a set of linked genetic changes that define him and his lineage.
08:58So it will tell us who could be his direct descendant.
09:02Even if King Tabnet's DNA is useful, it will be only one piece of a complicated puzzle.
09:10Many more pieces will be found back in Lebanon, where the Phoenician story began.
09:15Here, Spencer joins forces with geneticist Pierre Zelloua.
09:21Nice to see you.
09:22Nice to see you, man.
09:23Nice to see you.
09:24Together, they will continue the genetic hunt for the Phoenicians.
09:32Pierre is a local.
09:33He grew up in a small village north of Beirut.
09:36Though his research has taken him as far away as Harvard,
09:40he wants to uncover a mystery much closer to home.
09:45I am a geneticist, but I love history.
09:48And Lebanon is the heart of the Phoenician land.
09:50So what I would like to do is trace back my history
09:53and the history of the people I live with through genetics.
09:58I really consider myself to be a historian.
10:01And I see genetics as a tool for discovering things about the past.
10:05For me, the opportunity to go out and meet these people
10:08and visit these fascinating places, it's just incredible.
10:12You know, it's like strolling through the past.
10:16For Spencer and Pierre, one of the first places to search for clues
10:19may be here, in the local market.
10:24The Phoenicians may be best understood
10:26as some of the ancient world's first traveling salesmen.
10:31Phoenicians were really master salesmen.
10:33They had the gift and the ability to persuade other people
10:37of the value of their goods and services, you know, to make a dollar.
10:43Flashing eyes, winsome smiles, charm bordering on pushiness.
10:49Whatever it takes to make the sale.
10:52You can learn a lot by people's faces.
10:56You see people interacting with each other,
10:58and it's a reflection of a culture.
11:00It's a reflection of their shared history.
11:01It's a reflection of the way they've done things
11:03over many, many generations.
11:06And as with traveling salesmen the world over,
11:10the Phoenicians may have been busy doing more than just selling goods.
11:15As population geneticists, what we study is how people are related to each other.
11:19In effect, the history of who had sex with whom.
11:23Are the genes of the Phoenicians hidden in the blood of these modern-day Lebanese
11:29and passed down generation to generation?
11:32To find out, the geneticists will collect over 2,000 blood samples
11:38throughout Lebanon and around the Mediterranean.
11:41At the heart of their quest?
11:43A Phoenician identity crisis.
11:47Who were they initially in 1200 BC?
11:49What about the genetic makeup of the Phoenicians at their genesis?
11:54Were they Canaanites?
11:56In the Old Testament, the Canaanites were the people who lived throughout the Levant
12:02from before 2000 BC until around 1200 BC.
12:08Because they preceded the Phoenicians, and because their homelands overlap,
12:13most archaeologists believe the Canaanites and the Phoenicians are the same people.
12:17But no one has ever proven it.
12:23The archaeology of the Phoenicians suggests that they developed steadily out of the older Canaanite cultures.
12:29But it would be really important to know how much genetic continuity there was.
12:34Will this genetic quest confirm the archaeology?
12:39Or will it reveal something else?
12:41A genetic link to a darker legacy?
12:45The story, found in ancient Egyptian sources, suggests that a group of marauders, known only as the Sea Peoples,
12:53invaded the Levant around 1200 BC.
12:58Some scholars believe they mixed with the Canaanites to create a new people, the Phoenicians.
13:04Curiously, it is only after the Sea Peoples arrive in the Levant that the Phoenicians race ahead of their competitors.
13:14Their boats evolved into large, sea-going transports, capable of covering more than 100 miles in a day.
13:25They found colonies, build the world's first international cartel, and create a vast commercial empire.
13:32But what caused this dramatic leap forward?
13:37Did the Sea Peoples simply influence the Canaanites?
13:40Or did they interbreed with them and become the Phoenicians?
13:49There are a lot of arguments among scholars on just how much impact the Sea Peoples had on the Phoenicians.
13:55And whether this had an impact on the Phoenicians' later development as the greatest sailors in the Mediterranean.
13:59Were they influenced genetically by the Sea Peoples?
14:04Most of the information we have is hearsay.
14:06So it really is breaking new ground to go out and do these studies using genetics.
14:11And of course, we have to put the genetics into context with the archaeology.
14:16Their search leads them east into the terraced Khadisha Valley.
14:22Here, Pierre wants to show Spencer a seminal part of the Phoenician past.
14:29So these are the cedars.
14:31Cedars of the Lord, you call them?
14:32Yeah.
14:33In this tiny, protected grove, they find what remains of the fabled cedars of Lebanon.
14:39The building blocks of Phoenician civilization.
14:43Three thousand years ago, these mountains were covered with them.
14:51They built their boats with this durable wood, and then used those ships to transport cedar to the powers of the ancient world.
14:59The Egyptian pharaohs treasured cedar for its fragrant resin.
15:04King Solomon coveted it and used it to build his legendary temple of Jerusalem.
15:11Cedar may have gotten the Phoenicians into the game, but they sold more than their famous wood.
15:20Everything from ostrich eggs, to wine, to a Phoenician purple dye that became a staple in royal households throughout the ancient world, made it onto their ships.
15:35Most of these goods, this evidence of their lives, have been lost to time.
15:44But where did the people who traded them go?
15:48The answer is in the blood.
15:51Okay, off we go.
15:52This tire was, you know, the key Phoenician port.
15:55There's something magical about this town.
15:57It embraces the sea in a way that is really amazing.
16:00When Spencer and Pierre bring their investigation to the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre, they have a tough sell on their hands.
16:08How do two complete strangers show up and ask the locals for their blood?
16:13The answer becomes apparent pretty quickly.
16:20Ask the people who pulled their living from the sea.
16:24Certainly most people that I've encountered are really fascinated by this idea that you're going to be able to take something out of their arm which looks identical to the same stuff that you take out of the arm of the person sitting next to them and figure out something about your past.
16:38They are very interested in knowing exactly where they come from.
16:42It's very intriguing when you tell them, hey, I can trace back your lineage.
16:47They light up.
16:51How does the blood Spencer and Pierre collect today help them uncover the Phoenicians of more than 2,000 years ago?
17:00Within our blood is DNA, a molecular blueprint passed on to our children.
17:05Each person's blueprint is made of the same four building blocks, labeled A, C, G and T, repeated in a string some 3 billion letters long.
17:18It's the sequence of the letters that determines who you are.
17:25What we as geneticists, and in particular as population geneticists study, is genetic variation, changes in that sequence.
17:32These glitches that have occurred in the past that distinguish between individuals.
17:38These variations, or markers, are so rare that when they do occur, they define a unique family line.
17:46If you share a marker with another person, you share an ancestor.
17:53That gives us a clue about how far back this ancestry really goes.
17:58When do we last share a common ancestor?
18:01How far back do the family trees go before we get to that common individual who unites everyone in the tree?
18:06Scientists can use the markers to determine when one group began mixing with another.
18:17If they can find markers that connect to the Phoenicians, they will be able to trace Phoenician history through the blood of their descendants.
18:26But finding the Phoenician marker could have modern implications.
18:33Their results may ripple through the already turbulent waters of Lebanon.
18:41For more than 15 years, Lebanon was torn by religious war.
18:48For some, even the legacy of the Phoenicians became controversial.
18:53People are very, very concerned that we're going to find that one population perhaps is directly related to the Phoenicians, while others are not.
19:03And therefore, they have more of a stake in the area. I don't know.
19:08Will their investigation confirm this fear or refute it?
19:14Thirty years of wars in Lebanon is enough.
19:19I think a scientific approach to this would help a lot.
19:24That's why I'm doing it. I really want to help. I really want to uncover this.
19:28Could the blood of the fishermen of Tyre carry evidence that might help repair the wounds of war?
19:40Do their faces reflect in some fleeting way the faces of the Phoenicians from long ago?
19:45Though it may be hard to see in these eyes, even 3,000 years ago, religious controversies swirled around the Phoenicians.
19:59The Old Testament tells the story of one of Tyre's most infamous daughters, Jezebel.
20:06The quintessentially shameless woman was, in fact, a Phoenician princess.
20:14Jezebel was married to Ahab, a king of Israel.
20:17She seduced him and his followers into praying to her gods, the idols of Phoenicia.
20:27I think that she did, in fact, get a bad rap because what she was doing was importing all of the kinds of religious practices that she grew up with as a princess of ancient Tyre.
20:37And that it was natural for her to bring those things with her when she became the queen of ancient Samaria.
20:45Jezebel's rise to power and the threat she posed to the prophets of Israel led to her demise.
20:52In the end, she died violently, pushed out a window by her own servants.
20:57Her brutal legacy cast a grave shadow over the ancient Phoenicians.
21:04In the Old Testament, they're maligned as idol worshippers.
21:09Other ancient texts refer to them as cheaters and hucksters, the bad boys of the ancient world.
21:16The Phoenicians were very wealthy and very powerful, and this caused tremendous envy and jealousy on the kingdom of Israel.
21:23The Phoenicians get very negative reporting in the Hebrew Bible.
21:26They constantly write about the luxury and wealth and beauty of ancient cities like Tyre and Sidon.
21:32But at the same time, they're constantly talking about how they sink beds of corruption and filth and squalor.
21:40So perhaps the root of all the bad press was envy.
21:45Their rivals could not compete with the rulers of the seas.
21:48The remarkable ships of those rulers is what explorer Robert Ballard seeks.
22:01For Ballard, excavating a Phoenician hull would be the closest he could ever come to meeting them.
22:06Between Tunisia and Sicily.
22:07In many ways, we're following the same trade routes the Phoenicians follow.
22:11Westward Ballard.
22:12Ballard has also mastered the Mediterranean.
22:15The sea once considered the middle of the earth.
22:18His discoveries employing state-of-the-art technology and gut instincts have made him one of the most prominent explorers of our times.
22:27The Phoenicians are the true ancient mariner.
22:31They didn't have a giant nation, a great army, vast natural resources and wealth.
22:37They had to survive on their cunning and their mastery of the sea.
22:43I am a person of the sea. I have a connection to them.
22:48I'm somewhat of a rogue as well.
22:53I have great respect for them.
22:56So I want to find them.
22:59June 11th, 1999.
23:02Ballard has found the Phoenicians.
23:05Joined by Harvard archaeologist Larry Stager,
23:08the explorer is positioned above a site near the coastal border of Egypt and Israel.
23:13There's something coming in, but it's to the right here.
23:18Oh, yeah.
23:20There's something there.
23:22The find is astounding.
23:24That's got to be the big one.
23:26Oh, that's the mother lord.
23:28Another of all ships.
23:30We're coming in.
23:32I wasn't looking at the wreck. I was looking at Larry's face.
23:35I came in and I saw his face just glow.
23:38And he said, they're Phoenicians.
23:43There she blows.
23:45It was the oldest shipwreck ever found in the deep.
23:48All right.
23:50All right.
23:52It's cargo of amphora jars stacked on a deck that now rests 1,200 feet down.
23:58This is the first Iron Age ship that's ever been found.
24:03All right.
24:04All right.
24:05But the real revelation is the ship's location roughly 30 miles from shore.
24:12Proof that the ancient Phoenicians left the safety of the coast and struck out across the open sea.
24:20Look at those other pods.
24:22We didn't see those in the...
24:24Look at that.
24:26There's the anchor.
24:27There's the anchor.
24:28There's the anchor.
24:29Yes.
24:30Up to the upper right.
24:31As a seaman and entrepreneur, Ballard could put himself into the mind of the ancient Mariner.
24:40If you think about the ancient Mariner, time was money, particularly for a Phoenician.
24:44And they didn't want to waste time.
24:45I think that they wanted to go the quickest, fastest way to anywhere.
24:51Five years later, Ballard plans to return to this site.
24:54Ruhi has no idea how difficult it will be to find the Phoenicians once more.
25:08Across the Mediterranean, another quest to unlock the secrets of the Phoenicians is unfolding at what was once the edge of their known world.
25:15Gibraltar.
25:19At the point where Africa and Europe nearly touch, the legendary rock juts from the sea, an unmistakable gateway.
25:28The Phoenicians undoubtedly crossed this threshold.
25:32But what did it take to traverse a portal into the unknown?
25:38Answers are coming to light in a cave at the base of the rock.
25:46Here, archaeologists have to earn their knowledge.
25:50The entrance to Gorham's cave is some 350 steep steps down the crumbling face of the rock.
25:59Spanish archaeologist Paco Giles helps lead the team.
26:04We're at a very, very wild place, and it's complicated to get to the cave.
26:09A lot of rocks have fallen from the top of the rock of Gibraltar, and both the going up and going down are dangerous.
26:16But for Giles, the risks are a fair price to pay.
26:23Over the years, they've found more than 5,000 artifacts in the cave.
26:27But they are not what might be expected.
26:32Here, we don't have kitchen stuff or items for daily use.
26:36What we have are very small items that, in spiritual terms, are very large.
26:46Giles' team has discovered what seem to be personal talismans, charms, rings, scarabs, finely crafted glass vases.
26:56Even though they are very tiny items, we can reconstruct through them the moment, the key moment, of the Phoenicians' visit.
27:07Giles believes the Phoenicians were performing some kind of ritual here.
27:17But until the excavation is completed, its precise nature will remain unknown.
27:22While there are many Phoenician sites in the Mediterranean, virtually no written evidence has ever been excavated.
27:33In fact, not a single original Phoenician manuscript has survived, leaving them mute and defenseless throughout the millennia.
27:42The Phoenicians had the unlucky fate of sharing the Mediterranean with two jealous foes.
27:54The ancient Greeks from 1200 BC, and the ancient Romans from 300 BC.
28:03Much of what we do know of their rites and rituals comes from the damning words of these rivals.
28:08The Greek historian Herodotus described a ritual, a kind of institutionalized one night stand, much like what happened in Phoenicia.
28:22Every woman must sit in the temple and associate once in her life with a strange man.
28:30When she is given herself, she has fulfilled her duty to the goddess and returns home.
28:39I think from these people we get a very skewed look at the Phoenicians.
28:45The kind of religion that they were practicing was not so different from religion as practiced by so many peoples in the ancient Levant.
28:58Perhaps a more accurate but still confounding history is portrayed in their sculpture.
29:03The consummate salesmen, Phoenicians reveal a chameleon-like nature, mimicking the taste of their clients.
29:14The Egyptians, the Persians, the Israelites.
29:20Though they may appear disingenuous, one discovery at the Temple of Eshmun reveals a more sincere Phoenician.
29:26Phoenicians with sick children came to this holy site south of Beirut to ask Eshmun, their god of healing, for help.
29:40They brought more than just prayers for their children.
29:57Phoenician families, barterers to the end, had these life-size figures sculpted as a plea for a cure.
30:04We may think of Eshmun as a kind of a pediatrician for young children and that those statues were actual offerings for the well-being or a cure for a disease that afflicted a young person.
30:21Eshmun's temple is just outside of Sidon, one of the wealthiest and most powerful in the chain of coastal city-states that made up ancient Phoenicia.
30:42For five years, Lebanese archaeologist Claude Dumetsir Hall has been digging at Sidon.
30:57Sidon, mentioned in the Odyssey, mentioned thirty-fourth time in the Bible, one of the greatest cities of the Levant and one of the main harbors, and never excavated.
31:06What is so special to this site is the continuous occupation from the end of the fourth millennium right to the first millennium.
31:18She has uncovered an incredible find, a man who died in the early days of Phoenician history, the time of the Canaanites.
31:26But more importantly, this is just one of thirty-six graves unearthed at Sidon.
31:35For Spencer and Pierre, the discovery of another skeleton could mean a chance for more ancient DNA, but the discovery of over thirty skeletons is a genetic goldmine.
31:46It could be a major break in the case for the geneticists, if only they can convince Claude to share some teeth.
31:55Where are we going to find her? Just the floor down here?
31:57Hey Spencer, it's right there.
31:59Yeah?
32:00Amazing.
32:04I see two teeth falling. You see them?
32:07Yeah.
32:09Well, let's go find her.
32:10Okay.
32:11I really want to get these two teeth here.
32:13I mean, they're falling apart.
32:15I mean, it's not part of the skeleton anymore.
32:18That's what I'll tell her.
32:19Well, hopefully she'll see it that way.
32:22It's very, very difficult to get DNA material out of these skeletal remains.
32:26But if you can do that, it's invaluable.
32:29It's fantastic data.
32:32Archaeologists couldn't dig here for fifteen years because of the civil war in Lebanon.
32:37But now, Claude's site may give her a first glimpse of the Phoenicians' ancestors in Sidon.
32:42This is what down there we have. We go from the end of 4000 BC till the fifth century BC.
32:49But the importance of the site may actually work against Spencer and Pierre.
32:54Their research may have to take a back seat to scientists who have waited more than a decade to study such a find.
33:00There isn't a place in the whole of Lebanon where you can excavate the third millennium with this facility.
33:08Yeah.
33:09It's a highway for third millennium.
33:11It's fantastic.
33:13Burial's just started.
33:14So we can sit together, see what you need.
33:17How much time would that be to say, OK, now I can give you a sample?
33:21It depends how much you need and how much it will take them.
33:25You see, I don't think...
33:27Perhaps betraying his Phoenician roots, Pierre tries to cut a deal.
33:31There are two right here that are falling off.
33:34You're having ideas.
33:36I have my stuff.
33:38Only when your back is turned, though.
33:41You actually need a population.
33:43So you need to look at variation across a group of individuals, perhaps at 1500 BC, the time of the Canaanites,
33:50and another one perhaps at 800 or 600 BC, the time of the Phoenicians,
33:55and see if perhaps there's continuity between those populations, if there's a genetic difference.
34:00And that gives us a check, a way of confirming the results that we get from the blood.
34:06But, you know, I mean, you're a great archaeologist.
34:09I mean, it's a pleasure for us and an honor for us to work with you.
34:13It's a very nice site.
34:15It's a chance.
34:16It's a time machine.
34:18So that was very promising.
34:19Oh, excellent.
34:20Promising as the site may be to Spencer and Pierre, it is even more promising to other scientists.
34:27They find they will be last in line to study the remains.
34:36With the trail for ancient Phoenician DNA gone cold, Spencer and Pierre have to plot out their next move.
34:42A few hundred miles away, explorer Robert Ballard's troubles are far more serious.
34:54So I was going to have them over there.
34:56Ballard had planned to return to the Phoenician wrecks found in 1999.
34:59This time with a remarkable new machine, the remote excavator Hercules.
35:09The breakthrough technology would allow him to be the first to fully excavate the earliest Phoenician ships ever found in the deep.
35:15But it's not going to happen.
35:16Ballard is stymied by international politics.
35:26Last time we were here, which was in 1999, Israel said that we were off their coast.
35:33And they came out with a gunboat, and that's pretty convincing.
35:36And they also sent observers.
35:38But they said, but you're beyond our territorial waters.
35:41Therefore, you don't have to ask permission.
35:45You're beyond our territorial claims.
35:47But then the law changed, and the border shifted, and it became Egyptian waters.
35:59Ballard was awaiting final permission from the Egyptians when the elusive Phoenicians slipped away again.
36:09All of a sudden we get a letter from our State Department in Cairo,
36:12saying that the Egyptian military deems our mission a threat to the national security of Egypt.
36:23Wow, that's amazing.
36:27I don't think we'll ever get back to those two ships.
36:30And they were very important ships.
36:32No one had ever found Phoenician ships.
36:35So basically, we're back to square one.
36:37Instead of pulling the plug, Ballard decides to take to the hunt.
36:45One of his new targets is an ancient sea lane between the island of Malta and Phoenicia's greatest colony, Carthage.
36:55In about 800 BC, the Phoenicians extended their reach across the Mediterranean,
37:00and founded Carthage, which means new city in Phoenician.
37:08From its Phoenician roots, the colony grew to dominate the region,
37:12eventually surpassing the power of its founders.
37:19For Spencer and Pierre, Carthage holds a natural appeal.
37:22It was a major Phoenician settlement for hundreds of years.
37:26That's right.
37:27And so you have a gradual diffusion of genotypes out from Carthage.
37:31Go to the places that were identified in historical sources as being Phoenician settlements,
37:36places like Carthage.
37:38Sample people there, look at the genetic lineages they have,
37:41and see if any of those could trace back to Lebanon.
37:45The blood taken here will be some of the last collected for this phase of the research.
37:50Spencer and Pierre will then begin the lengthy, tedious business of analyzing the genetic data.
38:03Meanwhile, Ballard is trawling along an ancient trade route between Malta and Carthage.
38:09So that range is back to the spot, right?
38:13The search area is a sea lane over a hundred miles long,
38:16and while the chance of finding a Phoenician wreck in the open sea is small,
38:22it's still the only chance Ballard has.
38:25Right where we're headed right now, it's a great hunting ground for shipwrecks.
38:30We know the Phoenicians passed through this gauntlet countless times,
38:35and statistically, many didn't make it, and this is the place to find them.
38:45Ballard searches using an optical imaging system he calls Argus.
38:50Jim, do you hear me?
38:51Yep.
38:52You can get back up to seven.
38:54Okay, soft bottom as expected.
38:57Argus lets Bob walk along the sea floor like a prospector looking for gold.
39:06Now, do we have a distance that we've traveled since we started?
39:10With his array of technology, Ballard's ship is a far cry from the wooden boats of the Phoenicians.
39:16These people were at one with the sea.
39:25I'm barely connected to the sea when I'm surrounded with technology like this.
39:31So, I would have loved to sail with them.
39:34I would have just sat there and watched.
39:38Ballard would have sat alongside mariners who held a vast and intimate knowledge of the entire night sky.
39:46Many scholars believe they were the first navigators to identify the North Star,
39:52and to use it to find their way.
39:55Guided by the angle of the sun, the flight of birds, the coolness and wetness of a breeze,
40:02their minds were their compass.
40:06But despite their finely tuned skills, Ballard knows the sea still claimed the lives of many.
40:14Yeah.
40:16You slow down a little, I think, uh...
40:18That doesn't make finding them any easier.
40:21Well, I've sure seen a lot of this in my life.
40:24Lots and lots of blood.
40:26That would look like wood.
40:28She stopped and dropped the ship.
40:32The search reveals nothing but a few false alarms.
40:34Look at that big anchor.
40:37A ship like a rooftop right there?
40:39Yeah, that's not that old a ship, but...
40:41Well, I'll be darned.
40:43That's a modern boat, you know?
40:45Yeah, it's a modern boat.
40:47Well, we'll keep plugging away.
40:50Only got four million miles to go.
40:51Don't you think?
40:52The Mediterranean covers almost a million square miles of Earth.
41:01Ancient records say that by 1100 BC, the Phoenicians reached its western gateway near Gibraltar.
41:09They called this place the Pillars of Melkart, named for their primary deity and the god of storms.
41:19Before the Phoenicians, very few people from the Mediterranean had sailed far into the Atlantic.
41:26This must have been the most terrifying experience for ancient sailors.
41:34To reckon with their fear, Phoenician sailors would have struck some kind of spiritual bargain.
41:43Evidence of that bargain is exactly what archaeologist Paco Giles has found.
41:49Proof that fear is what filled this cave with charms.
41:56The Phoenician navigators came here and personally made an offering to create an alliance,
42:04a kind of marriage between the deities, the sea gods, and them, the navigators.
42:17They made these offerings to the deities to gain their support and protection
42:21for the difficult passage through the Straits of Gibraltar to the end of their world.
42:34What pushed them through the pillars, beyond the relative safety of the Mediterranean?
42:40The desire to get rich quick.
42:43There was a push factor and a pull factor that drove the Phoenicians in their travels.
42:47The push factor was that they lived on the edge of great empires which were constantly demanding tribute from them.
42:54They had to produce wealth to pay their conquerors.
42:57The pull factor was that they could make great wealth for themselves as well.
43:02At the cusp of the Iron Age, the ancient world's desire for metal was growing,
43:07and the Phoenicians were eager to discover new sources.
43:14It was that huge and growing appetite that encouraged the Phoenicians to move further and further afield to look for new sources of ancient metals, including iron itself.
43:24Once they ventured beyond the pillars, they didn't stop.
43:30Herodotus wrote of Phoenicians who circumnavigated Africa around 600 B.C.,
43:36some 2,000 years before Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama.
43:40Another account tells of an expedition to Western Africa.
43:50The captain wrote of seeing crocodiles, hippos, and women with shaggy bodies, called gorillas.
43:57The explorer skinned three of them.
43:59The Phoenician navigator Himilco allegedly braved the Atlantic's rough seas as far as the coast of Britain,
44:11all in pursuit of tin.
44:18If these accounts are valid, then it is the Phoenicians who started the first age of Western exploration,
44:24centuries before the birth of Christ.
44:32The most amazing thing about the Phoenicians is not so much that they invented maritime trade,
44:40but that they actually pushed the whole boundaries of commercial trade far beyond what anybody had done before.
44:47Any hint of that glorious past has eluded Robert Ballard.
44:55His search along the ancient sea lane near Carthage has left him empty-handed.
45:03Yeah, I haven't been able to reach him either.
45:05But for Ballard, the game isn't over yet.
45:07He knows a place where he can find the next best thing,
45:13Roman wrecks that he believes were based on Phoenician design.
45:19He's going on more than a hunch.
45:22Rome coveted Phoenician ships and the trade routes,
45:26an envy that would lead to conflict with Carthage
45:29and to the final chapter of Phoenician history.
45:32Carthage was the most terrifying enemy the Romans had ever had to face.
45:38It was a great naval power, whereas the Romans had really no ships at all.
45:43Envy and jealousy of the Carthaginians' wealth probably played a large role
45:48in the way the Romans in particular painted Carthage as an evil and corrupt society.
45:55Ancient writers claimed that on moonlit nights,
45:57Carthaginian priests offered a living child as a sacrifice to the gods
46:03in times of war, famine or plague.
46:09Flutes, tambourines and lyres drowned out the parents' cries.
46:16Their ashes and bones were put in a small urn
46:19and placed with others in the sacrificial burial ground of their goddess.
46:27We know that the Israelites and the Greeks and the Romans hated Phoenicia and Carthage
46:32and constantly went out of their way to paint the Phoenicians negatively.
46:36But it's surprising that they all picked on the same story.
46:39So surprising, in fact, that many scholars think that there must be something to this.
46:46Though the accounts come from their rivals, the archaeology appears damning.
46:51The evidence that people have found that the Carthaginians really did sacrifice babies
46:58does seem to be quite strong.
47:00In cemeteries that the Carthaginians called tophets,
47:04they found the burned bones of babies buried inside pots.
47:08Since the 1920s, archaeologists have uncovered 20,000 of these burial jars.
47:15The stories must have stoked Roman hatred for Carthage.
47:26Imperial envy, perhaps bolstered by moral outrage, led to war.
47:32But Carthage was a formidable enemy.
47:35The Phoenician colony had evolved into an unrivaled naval power.
47:41Their sleek fighting galleys were the ultimate warships of the ancient world.
47:46With multiple levels of rowers and a bow encased in bronze for ramming,
47:53they could wreak havoc on enemy fleets.
47:55But even more impressive was the harbor where they were birthed.
48:04Constructed at the pinnacle of Carthaginian power,
48:07the harbor boasted sections for both commercial and naval vessels.
48:12Surrounding a tower on a man-made island were slips for more than 150 warships.
48:19This was the heart of their maritime power.
48:22Nothing threatened Rome more.
48:26The two ancient superpowers battled for over 100 years in what were called the Punic Wars.
48:33In 146 BC, Rome finally routed their navy and sacked Carthage,
48:40destroying what had started 700 years earlier as a Phoenician colony.
48:44Rome now ruled the Mediterranean, and its ships sailed freely throughout the sea.
48:57Bob Ballard, now poised for a last-ditch effort, is anchored over two of them.
49:02Well, this is where the Punic Wars were fought.
49:06Ancient accounts give Ballard hope.
49:09Somewhere in here there's...
49:11He knows the Romans were so jealous of Phoenician ships that they once captured a Carthaginian fleet
49:17and copied each ship, plank by plank.
49:20Ballard's intentions are a little less ambitious.
49:25He plans to use the excavator Hercules to remove the numerous artifacts on the surface of the wreck.
49:39Then look beneath them at key parts of the hull.
49:51We've got zero speed. We're settling right on the target.
49:54Yeah, roger that. We're right over the wreck.
49:56But Ballard must have angered one of the Phoenician gods,
49:59because on this expedition, he just can't get a break.
50:03Oh, jeez, I have no hydraulic pressure.
50:06That can't be right.
50:07That can't be right.
50:08That can't be right.
50:09Look at bubble cam.
50:11I have no hydraulic pressure, Jim.
50:15I have no hydraulic pressure.
50:17We have some...
50:18We're dead.
50:19We're dead.
50:20In the space of a few days, the revolutionary excavator suffers back-to-back and ultimately fatal breakdowns.
50:30Oh! Oh!
50:33The hell was that?
50:35Oh, no.
50:37Well, that's the end of that tool.
50:40We're not getting that emphora.
50:46It appears that Hercules has a fundamental problem.
50:50We've got a vehicle that gives us virtually no warning before it commits suicide.
50:54After a month at sea, three locations, and miles of muddy seafloor, the jig is finally up.
51:08For Ballard, who has always wanted to know the Phoenicians, even the most advanced technology has been useless in uncovering their secrets.
51:22Will the Phoenicians elude the genetic investigators as well?
51:25After analyzing countless blood samples, Spencer Wells and Pierre Zaloua have identified a set of genetic markers, the genes that define a Phoenician as a Phoenician.
51:44For the first time, we've actually been able to identify a set of what we're calling Phoenician genetic lineages, and these will allow us to trace the spread of this ancient seafaring population around the Mediterranean and perhaps even beyond.
52:01Following these lineages, they make a curious discovery about Carthage.
52:08In the greatest of Phoenician colonies, they find genetic evidence that less than 20% of today's population carries the Phoenician marker.
52:16What does that mean?
52:19It could mean that a very small group of Phoenicians, an elite, ruled a very large population in Carthage, and therefore they simply didn't have a huge genetic impact there.
52:29The other possibility is that the Romans, when they came in and wiped out Carthage, could have decimated the population carrying these Phoenician lineages, and we simply don't see them today.
52:37Spencer and Pierre can also cast new light on the Phoenicians' earliest days.
52:48They put to rest the controversial theory about the Phoenicians and the Sea Peoples.
52:54The marauding Sea Peoples may have jump-started Phoenician culture, propelling their great leap forward.
53:00But the scientists have found no genetic evidence that the Sea Peoples mixed with the Phoenicians.
53:14Perhaps the most powerful revelation comes for the people of Lebanon.
53:20The study reveals that today's Lebanese, the Phoenicians, and the Canaanites are one and the same people.
53:28The Phoenicians were here long before the time of Christ and Muhammad, and what the genetic results are telling us definitively is that today's Lebanese people, whether they're Christians or Muslims, are all tied together in this single gene pool.
53:43They're all part of one big family.
53:45So the genetic results are pulling people together, not ripping them apart.
53:49Ten years from now, when my little daughter is going to open the history book, and she's going to read about the people who lived here, she will read about the Phoenicians.
53:56She will read about the Phoenicians. It's our heritage.
54:04For boatbuilder Abu Lies, whose ship of reconciliation is about to set sail, this shared heritage rests at the keel of his ship.
54:15Both Muslim and Christian fishermen, hand-picked by the boatbuilder, are sailing his ship for the first time.
54:24There's no better feeling. I've achieved my dream. Before this moment, I didn't understand the Phoenicians. Now I know and understand them as sailors and as humans.
54:39While science has revealed that they are all connected by blood, these modern Phoenicians are bound even tighter by the sea.
54:49Something that Abu Lies seemed to know all along.
54:52Something Abu Lies seemed to know all along.
54:56dream of the heart of the sea.
54:57If you want to know all the people, just go to the sea.
54:58Whatever the world is, there are many people who think of the sun.
54:59There's no less people who think of the wind.
55:00If you can't reach the sea.
55:01If you want to see that, what are you?
55:02It's great.
55:03I've seen it here asúa.
55:04What are you?
55:05If you want to know all the boats, the pet owners.
55:06It's like we can get the horses and ride them,
55:08we can get the horses and ride them.
55:09The winters and ride them on the boat.
55:10Before theyольше, they eat their horses and ride them.
55:11The plow are the boats.
55:12And where they're the hunters and ride them in.
55:14Its ships they find the horses.
55:15And thisren trend is the horse.
55:16The moon and the hunters are alive.