⛵️ Punic DNA wasn’t Levantine

Most people buried at Punic sites in the central and western Mediterranean carried a Sicilian–Aegean genetic profile, not Levantine. North African ancestry was present but usually a minority. Even in North Africa itself, at Carthage and Kerkouane, 84% of individuals had more than 50% Sicilian–Aegean ancestry, and many can be modeled with no indigenous North African ancestry.

For contrast, the Levantine Phoenician site of Akhziv shows the opposite pattern, with individuals deriving more than 80% of their ancestry from a Levantine Bronze Age source.

Takeaway: Punic communities were culturally Phoenician but genetically mixed, dominated by Sicilian–Aegean ancestry with limited Levantine input.

Source: Ringbauer et al., 2025. Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestors.