Phoenicians: Ancient Mariners

With mountains to their backs and the sea spreading before them, the Phoenicians left a line of settlements along what is now the coast of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine/Israel. Tyre, once the most powerful of their cities, possessed features that Phoenician colonists sought again and again when settling on foreign shores: a defensible island, a protected anchorage, and easy access to agricultural fields on the mainland. Sidon, another great port, provided evidence of a revolutionary Phoeniciandevelopment: the world's earliest alphabet.