Voyages and settlements that Phoenician traders carried out during the first millennium BC. It seems that Phoenician navigators were the first to use the North Star to guide their travels, which allowed them to venture outside the Mediterranean Sea. From the city-states of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos, they extended their trade in crystals and cloth dyed purple to the western Mediterranean, in whose colonization they preceded the Greeks. They founded the cities of Gades, present-day Cádiz, and Carthage. Around 600 BC, according to Herodotus, the Egyptian pharaoh Nekó commissioned them to circumnavigate Africa:the expedition took three years to cover the 36,600 km of the African coast.
After Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Tire in 573 BC, the Phoenicians established their new capital at Carthage. They managed to control the passage through the Strait of Gibraltar and discovered the islands of Madeira, Canaries and Azores. In the 5th century BC crossed the English Channel and reached Cornwall. Hanon founded six colonies on the Atlantic coast of Africa and explored Senegal, the rivers of Gambia and the south coast as far as Sierra Leone or Cameroon.
Phoenician Civilization