The Founding of Carthage

814 BCE — Africa, Carthage

Today: Tunisia (a suburb of modern Tunis)

Phoenician settlers from Tyre founded a colony on the North African coast that grew into the dominant commercial power of the western Mediterranean. Carthage built its wealth on shipping rather than farming, ran a navy to protect its routes, and planted trading posts from Spain to Sicily. Its merchants may have sailed down the Atlantic coast of Africa and up to Britain for tin. For six centuries it was the richest city in the west — an African metropolis at the center of Mediterranean trade long before Rome mattered.

Worth knowing: Legend says Carthage's founder, Queen Dido, was told she could have as much land as an ox hide would cover — so she cut the hide into a single thread-thin strip and encircled an entire hill with it.

Pattern: Trade-route shift — The path or medium of exchange moves, and a place or power rises or declines because it sits on or off the new route.

Entry 28 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.