The Phoenician peace challenge

Phoenicia was an element such as a hinge connecting the East and West, supplying goods in the Near East and spreading westwards oriental products. Through this network, the Phoenicians were placed as carriers of ideas and men around the Mediterranean, becoming the architects of a peaceful and continuous dialogue, balance and coexistence among different and distant cultures.

The study of trade in the Phoenician history

Information about the Phoenicians, their origins and their cities are not many. For this reason, approaching the history of this people and his movements in the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC, the study of the trade network may be essential. The Phoenician trade, in the middle of long-distance flows of goods, was essentially an external exchange (import and export), although the distinction between internal and external trade in the Ancient Orient was not always clear, since political entities did not always coincide with cultural ones, which were often very blurred. From the development of the first cities of the fourth millennium BC until the birth of the great empires of the Iron Age, the long-range contacts in the Near East have changed because of social needs, cultural interaction and diversified distribution of resources in the territory. The main elements of the geographical context, the Arabian Desert, the river plains of Mesopotamia, the system of valleys Wadi Arabah-Jordan-Orontes, the mountainous areas of Turkey, Lebanon and Iran, the Syrian-Palestinian coast, have influenced the establishment of multi-centric economy. The exchange system was set on the interaction of different distribution models and networks of relationships developed by the different cultures involved. During the first millennium BC the field is expanded from Spain to Central Asia, from southern Arabia to India. The exchanges took place through highly mobile groups, involving distant and different contexts. In this system of contacts and traded commodities, the Phoenicians have assumed a primary role, which has gradually changed over the centuries.

This paper will be present by the University of Florence, Department of Conservation and restoration, the 14th of April during the first Mare Nostrum Conference in Malta.

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