The Phoenicians were highly skilled craftsmen, successful merchants, and accomplished seafarers. Descendants of the Canaanites, they lived on the east Mediterranean coast, mainly in modern Lebanon.
Having only a little land to exploit, they used what they had with great foresight and ingenuity. From fine sand, they made pure glass. Using shellfish, they created a highly valued purple dye. Elephant tusks were used to make precious ivory carvings while the mountains provided marble and iron, and their forests, timber to build their ships.
Their warships protected their merchant ships, and so the Phoenicians very quickly became a leading mercantile and maritime power during the 1st millennium BC. They established colonies around the shores of the Mediterranean, especially in southern Spain, Sicily, and North Africa, where their most famous colony was Carthage.
