Video from Timeline - World History Documentaries
"Combing through the Amazon wilderness, archeologists made an amazing discovery: artifacts of ancient seafaring people from the Iberian Peninsula. They may have fled the carnage of the Roman Empire's war on Carthage, called by some historians the Roman holocaust. This documentary investigates the claim that South America was discovered and settled by Mediterranean peoples over 2,000 years ago." from video introduction
Rome’s Early Rivals: Who Were the Carthaginians?
"Rome’s wars with Carthage were some of the most brutal and famous of its early history. But who were the people of Carthage?
Origins: The legend of Dido
According to myth, the city of Carthage, located near modern day Tunis on the North African coast, was founded by Queen Dido in the 9th century BC. Also known by her Greek name of Elissa, Dido is most famous today as a character in Virgil’s Aeneid, where she vainly attempts to seduce the wandering Aeneas as he flees the destruction of Troy.
Pitted as the original hero of Rome and an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, Aeneas came close to marrying Dido, before being forced to leave after divine intervention. The story goes that Aeneas’s departure from Carthage and rejection of Dido was the root of the city’s later wars with Rome.
Historians today question the veracity of the Dido legend, but it is clear that Carthage was founded as a trading outpost by the Phoenicians – a maritime civilisation originally from the region that today forms part of Lebanon. The city gradually grew to become a major centre of Mediterranean trade, and controlled a network of dependencies in North Africa, Spain, and Sicily.." from the article: Rome’s Early Rivals: Who Were the Carthaginians?