I know it isn't necessarily believable, and there's a lot of handwavium involved, but would it be possible for the Phoenicians to survive as a relatively small ethnic group into the 21st century?
My idea is:
The Phoenicians of "today" aren't very close (genetically) to their ancestors, just as the modern Greeks are more Slavic than Spartan. They're focused primarily in coastal Lebanon, which has become their nationalized homeland, appropriately named Phoenicia. Conquered by the Romans, they remained Roman Christians until the Schism of East and West where those residing in the Eastern Mediterranean adhered to Greek Orthodoxy, and those living in small enclaves along the east coast of Spain and Mediterranean ports of North Africa adhering to the Bishop of Rome. Their language, a complicated mixture of their original tongue, Greek, and Latin in their homeland while the dialect spoken in the ethnic enclaves is almost entirely Arabicized or Romance.
The largest concentrated populations would reside in a "renovated" Tyre, Valencia, and Tunis.
What do you think?
My idea is:
The Phoenicians of "today" aren't very close (genetically) to their ancestors, just as the modern Greeks are more Slavic than Spartan. They're focused primarily in coastal Lebanon, which has become their nationalized homeland, appropriately named Phoenicia. Conquered by the Romans, they remained Roman Christians until the Schism of East and West where those residing in the Eastern Mediterranean adhered to Greek Orthodoxy, and those living in small enclaves along the east coast of Spain and Mediterranean ports of North Africa adhering to the Bishop of Rome. Their language, a complicated mixture of their original tongue, Greek, and Latin in their homeland while the dialect spoken in the ethnic enclaves is almost entirely Arabicized or Romance.
The largest concentrated populations would reside in a "renovated" Tyre, Valencia, and Tunis.
What do you think?
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