Braindroppings

I saw a very interesting National Geographic documentary a few days ago about the Phoenicians. I think that they probably had one of the first great trade empires in the world. I was interested when the program mentioned that they had a lot of trade with the Persian Empire going back to several hundred years B.C.E. Part of the show was about some bioarcheologists who were comparing ancient Phoenician DNA to modern peoples around the Mediterranean. As they expected, many of today's inhabitants of Lebanon, both Christian and Muslim have Phoenician markers in their DNA. However, they were surprised that the modern inhabitants near ancient Carthage did not. It was my understanding that many of the Carthaginians were enslaved by the Romans after the Punic Wars. However, the show speculated that the Carthaginians may have just been massacred by the Romans. Apparently, no ancient Phoenician writings have ever been found. What a shame.

I was not aware that modern languages are simpler than ancient ones. I took three years of Latin in high school and it did seem very difficult to me. However, that was mostly because the concepts of masculine, feminine, and neuter and the idea of declention was quite foreign to me. My Latin teacher was of the opinion that the language was really quite logical. I have heard non-English speakers say that the grammer in English is very difficult to master. Well, these are just some thoughts. I am certainly not a linguist. Maybe the major modern languages exist by virtue of the fact that they were associated with great trading empires. I think that this would hold true for English and Spanish. Perhaps some of the complications of earlier forms of these modern languages were removed to facilite easier comprehension and hence easier trading. So, perhaps there is an economic answer to your question.

The History Channel program sounds interesting. I have made a note of it and I will try to watch it.