Question for the Coli historian

Sukairain

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I don't think so, his ethnicity was Punic. His ancestors came from Lebanon.

The important thing to note about Punic society is that ethnic Carthaginians rarely went into the military. It was a mercantile society, if you were Punic generally you went into business and politics, not soldiering. So armies were largely built up by hiring mercenaries of diverse backgrounds. Drafting was restricted to non-Punic lower classes. Command usually remained for Punics.

Hannibal's most important unit was likely made up of black men, the Numidian cavalry. Also the skirmishers - archers, slingers, and javelins - would also have been recruited exclusively from the Numidian population. There were also some mixed race Libyo-Punic spearmen he relied a lot on. Otherwise the rest of his army consisted of cacs - the Gallic and Iberian mercenary infantry.
 

Jammer22

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Carthage was controlled by the local berbers before it truly established dominance over western north africa.

Not sure how pure carthaginians were in terms of ancestry because of that.
 

Sukairain

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Carthage was controlled by the local berbers before it truly established dominance over western north africa.

Not sure how pure carthaginians were in terms of ancestry because of that.

It didn't exist until the Phoenicians arrived.

Carthage is an Anglicism of the Latin Carthago, which in turn derives from the Phoenician word Qarthadasht, meaning 'New City.' The Phoenicians built it from scratch. Over the next five hundred years their language and ethnicity shifted slightly and since people recognised they weren't the same as their Phoenician ancestors, they were called Punic.
 

LoStranger

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I always painted Hannibal as biracial or some sort of mixed stock. I say this because Punic people are essentially a mixture of Berbers and Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were a race/tribe of Semitic sea traders from modern day Lebanon and Berbers as we know are black (the indigenous ones)

So yeah I'mma say he was mixed:

1aaa793923.jpg
 
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