<html>
<head>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 11 (filtered)">
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Verdana;
panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0pt;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
p.MsoPlainText, li.MsoPlainText, div.MsoPlainText
{margin:0pt;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New";}
p
{margin-right:0pt;
margin-left:0pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
span.EmailStyle17
{font-family:Verdana;
color:windowtext;
font-weight:normal;
font-style:normal;
text-decoration:none none;}
@page Section1
{size:612.0pt 792.0pt;
margin:72.0pt 0pt 72.0pt 0pt;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
</head>
<body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple>
<div class=Section1>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>Here is some additional information on the PBS/National Geographic
special, “</span></font><b><font face=Verdana><span style='font-family:
Verdana;font-weight:bold'>Quest for the Phoenicians</span></font></b>”, airing
tomorrow (Wednesday) on WGBH at 8pm ET (Cable Channel 23 at MIT).<br>
<br>
This is an excerpt from what this production is about:</p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>"They were the 'Bad Boys' in the Bible, the envy of the Mediterranean, and their seafaring skills were legendary. But who exactly were the
Phoenicians, what became of them and what was the secret of their success? A
new NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SPECIAL sets out to solve these mysteries through the
pioneering work of three very different scientists in ‘Quest for the
Phoenicians’, airing on PBS Wednesday, October 20, 2004.<br>
<br>
</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>Wells has no doubts about the power of the new genetic techniques he is
bringing to our understanding of ancient peoples. Nor does his bespectacled
colleague standing beside him on the veranda, Pierre Zalloua, a 37-year-old
scientist with a dark goatee and an intense passion for his Lebanese heritage. The
two men hope to find new clues to an age-old riddle: Who were the Phoenicians? </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>Although they're mentioned frequently in ancient texts as vigorous
traders and sailors, we know relatively little about these puzzling people. Historians
refer to them as Canaanites when talking about the culture before 1200 B.C. The
Greeks called them the phoinikes, which means the "red people"—a
name that became Phoenicians—after their word for a prized reddish purple
cloth the Phoenicians exported. But they would never have called themselves
Phoenicians. Rather, they were citizens of the ports from which they set sail, walled
cities such as Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>The culture later known as Phoenician was flourishing as early as the
third millennium B.C. in the Levant, a coastal region now divided primarily
between Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. But it wasn't until around 1100 B.C., after
a period of general disorder and social collapse throughout the region, that
they emerged as a significant cultural and political force. </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>From the ninth to sixth centuries B.C. they dominated the Mediterranean
Sea, establishing emporiums and colonies from Cyprus in the east to the Aegean
Sea, Italy, North Africa, and Spain in the west. They grew rich trading
precious metals from abroad and products such as wine, olive oil, and most
notably the timber from the famous cedars of Lebanon, which forested the
mountains that rise steeply from the coast of their homeland. </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>The armies and peoples that eventually conquered the Phoenicians either
destroyed or built over their cities. Their writings, mostly on fragile papyrus,
disintegrated—so that we now know the Phoenicians mainly by the biased
reports of their enemies. Although the Phoenicians themselves reportedly had a
rich literature, it was totally lost in antiquity. That's ironic, because the
Phoenicians actually developed the modern alphabet and spread it through trade
to their ports of call. </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>Acting as cultural middlemen, the Phoenicians disseminated ideas, myths,
and knowledge from the powerful Assyrian and Babylonian worlds in what is now Syria and Iraq to their contacts in the Aegean. Those ideas helped spark a cultural revival in Greece, one which led to the Greeks' Golden Age and hence the birth of Western civilization.
The Phoenicians imported so much papyrus from Egypt that the Greeks used their
name for the first great Phoenician port, Byblos, to refer to the ancient paper.
The name Bible, or "the book," also derives from Byblos. </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>Today, Spencer Wells says, "Phoenicians have become ghosts, a
vanished civilization." Now he and Zalloua hope to use a different
alphabet, the molecular letters of DNA, to exhume these ghosts.” –
National Geographic</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'><br>
WGBH schedule and show times for this special:<br>
<a
href="http://www.wgbh.org/schedules/program-info?program_id=346045&episode_id=1852973">http://www.wgbh.org/schedules/program-info?program_id=346045&episode_id=1852973</a>
<br>
<br>
National Geographic pages on this production (w/ updates after the article had been
published):</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'><a
href="http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature2/index.html">http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature2/index.html</a></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>Here’s a very interesting forum discussing the finings for this
research/documentary:</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'><a
href="http://seabed.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/forum.tmpl?issue_id=20041001&forum_index=1">http://seabed.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/forum.tmpl?issue_id=20041001&forum_index=1</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Hope you enjoy it,<br>
L.<br>
<br>
</span></font></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>