As should be obvious from my work, seamanship was dominated through the European Bronze Age by Atlanteans who were surely closely affiliated with Iberian populations at the least. Thus it is a matter of collecting evidence to support all that. In short though, all these port cities were founded by the Atlanteans or whatever peoples took up sea trade. Calling them Sea Peoples is quite correct
Where we fail ourselves is understanding that we had a fifteen hundred year global history of trade and growth of all these related peoples all dominated by European populations ending in 1159BC. That was then followed by the the successor sea peoples who were the same folks but seriously diminished by the demand collapse of their trade currency of copper axes. These were known as the Phoenicians and they succumbed to the emergence of the Greeks or at least fell back on their cities to be then overrun by the Romans in time.
I have ample reason to suspect that the Nile delta was a largely Atlantean colony during the Bronze Age. Again DNA will ultimately sort all that out to our satisfaction.
DNA from ancient Phoenician stuns scientists
A wax figure of "The Young Phoenician Man of
Carthage" is seen during the opening of a special exhibition at the
American University of Beirut (AUB) Archaeological Museum in Beirut
January 29, 2014. (REUTERS/Jamal Saidi)
A study of the first DNA obtained from an ancient Phoenician reveals that the man had European ancestry.
The research team, which was co-led by Professor Lisa
Matisoo-Smith of the University of Otago in New Zealand, sequenced the
first complete mitochondrial genome of 2,500-year-old Phoenician buried
in North Africa. Experts studied a man dubbed the “Young Man of Byrsa”
or “Ariche,” whose remains were taken from a sarcophagus
in the ancient city of Carthage, just outside Tunis, the Tunisian
capital. Carthage was the center of the Phoenician civilization.
Analysis shows that the man belonged to a rare
European haplogroup – a genetic group with a common ancestor –
indicating that his maternal ancestry is linked to locations on the
North Mediterranean coast, probably on the Iberian Peninsula.
The findings offer the earliest evidence of the
European mitochondrial haplogroup U5b2c1 in North Africa, according to
Matisoo-Smith, dating its arrival to at least the late sixth century
B.C.
"U5b2c1 is considered to be one of the most ancient
haplogroups in Europe and is associated with hunter-gatherer populations
there,” she explained, in a press release.
“It is remarkably rare in modern populations today, found in Europe at
levels of less than one per cent. Interestingly, our analysis showed
that Ariche's mitochondrial genetic make-up most closely matches that of
the sequence of a particular modern day individual from Portugal.”
Researchers note that, while the Phoenicians are
thought to have originated from the area that is now Lebanon, their
influence spread across the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula. The
Spanish cities of Malaga and Cadiz, for example, were founded by
Phoenicians.
Experts analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of 47 modern
Lebanese people and found none were of the U5b2c1 lineage. U5b2c1 has
already been found in two ancient hunter-gatherers recovered from an
archaeological site north-Western spain, according to Matisoo-Smith.
"While a wave of farming peoples from the Near East
replaced these hunter-gatherers, some of their lineages may have
persisted longer in the far south of the Iberian peninsula and on
off-shore islands and were then transported to the melting pot of
Carthage in North Africa via Phoenician and Punic trade networks," she
said, in the press release.
The study was published in the journal Plos One.
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