Were the Phoenicians Nomadic Pastoralists?

Answer 1

No, they were traders that used the Mediterranean Sea. They are famous for two main reasons.

1. They created the first alphabet using phonics. (It's why we call our alphabet phonetic.)

2. They established the city of Carthage which a few hundred years later would become a powerful empire itself and challenge Rome for control of the Mediterranean Coast.

Here is the wikipedia website all about the Phoenicians and Phoenicia.

Answer 2

Pastoralism is a form of farming, such as agriculture and horticulture. It is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas and sheep. It also contains a mobile element, moving the herds in search of fresh pasture and water.

The Phoenicians were not an agricultural people, because most of the land was not arable; therefore, they focused on commerce and trading instead. They did, however, raise sheep and sell them and their wool.

Phoenicia was an ancient civilization centred in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal plains of what is now Lebanon. Phoenician civilization was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC.

In the centuries following 1200 BC, the Phoenicians formed the major naval and trading power of the region.

The Phoenicians established commercial outposts throughout the Mediterranean, the most strategically important ones being Carthage in North Africa, and directly across the narrow straits in Sicily — carefully selected with the design of monopolizing the Mediterranean trade beyond that point and keeping their rivals from passing through. Other colonies were planted in Cyprus, Corsica, Sardinia, the Iberian Peninsula, and elsewhere. They also founded innumerable small outposts a day's sail away from each other all along the North African coast on the route to Spain's mineral wealth.

Answer 3

Just a note -- a correction of CoachPearce's post, though I don't blame him... the wikipedia article he cites is simply wrong! I have edited out the mistaken part of the article he used... but also check the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet

The Phoenicians did NOT invent the alphabet! They get some credit for SPREADING it throughout the Mediterranean as they conducted their trade. But they were just one of a whole group of speakers of 'Northwest Semitic' languages (which include Hebrew and Aramaic) who used an alphabet originated perhaps around 1900 B.C., probably by Semitic speakers living in the Sinai under Egyptian rule (very likely borrowing something from part of the Egyptian system of hieroglyphics to invent their own writing system).
http://www.ancientscripts.com/alphabet.html

Answer 4

"Nomadic" means that they traveled around and didn't have any fixed towns or cities. "Pastoralists" means that they herded livestock, such as sheep or goats, if not cattle. I don't know about the very earliest Phoenicians, but I do know that Carthage was a Phoenician city, and so was Tyre.

Answer 5

I sure never heard that. My understanding was that they were a trading, seafaring people with large port cities, something on the line of Greeks or Romans.

Answer 6

They were never pastoralists & they were seamen & traders, establishing colonies in the meditarranean region.