Was Hannibal Barca Black? A new controversy has been picking up lately, and this question was once on the fringe and now comes out to the front lines. Hannibal Barca was one of the greatest generals in history, especially known for his pivotal battles and near victory over the Roman Republic.
It is alarming just how often this is happening. And the fact that merely raising an eyebrow to it somehow makes you a racist. This post is not intended to push an agenda, political side, or theories. It is only to correct this false claim. And finally, this is not an attack on black Africans. I will be covering real black African history on this site, so any readers from the continent of Africa, stay tuned.
Please, everyone, keep the comments polite and link to sources.
Netflix is no stranger to controversy. In May 2023, Cleopatra was cast as a black African woman in the release of the second season of the TV series African Queens. This is despite Cleopatra being of mostly Greek heritage. Now, a new controversy has arrived (or perhaps free advertising). The famous Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca is now under Netflix’s gaze. Unfortunately, most people learn through the media. The question, ‘Was Hannibal Barca black?’ became widely searched.
Hannibal Barca
Before diving into the question, let’s briefly review who Hannibal was. Hannibal Barca was a Carthaginian commander born around 247 BC. He is known as a brilliant strategist during the Second Punic War against Rome (218-201 BC). And for his military campaigns during the Second Punic War. He initiated a daring march across the Alps with his troops, including elephants, which was quite a feat even for Hannibal. Hannibal eventually took his own life in 183 BC to avoid capture.
What was Hannibal’s Ethnic Background?
I will quickly give you my position on the matter. Hannibal Barca was born into a Carthaginian military family. Carthage was founded by Phoenicians, who are a Semitic people.
North Africa, specifically Tunisia, where Carthage was located, already had populations of indigenous North Africans when the Phonecians settled there.
And finally, Greek migrants in the form of artists and traders. Carthage almost looks like a Greek city due to its massive influence.
In short, the Carthaginian gene pool and, most likely, Hannibal Barca would be a mix of Semitic, North African, and Greek ancestry. I will give my evidence based on the genetic evidence given below.
Also, there is no single description of Hannibal Barca from any Roman, Carthaginian, or Greek writer. So, we are not one hundred per cent sure what he looks like, but we can guess.
His name is semantic, but many people have names that do not reflect their ethnic background.
But let us talk about the arguments for a black Hannibal Barca.
The “Blackness” Of The Phonecians
The first argument is that the Ponecians were black Africans; they cite Herodotus.
Herodotus:
“The Persian learned men say that the Phoenicians were the cause of the dispute. These (they say) came to our seas from the sea which is called Red.”
“This nation, according to their account, dwelt anciently upon the Erythraean sea, but crossing thence, fixed themselves on the sea costs of Syria where they still inhabit.”
Their point is that the Erythraean Sea (Eritrean Sea) is close to the Horn of Africa; therefore, the Phonecians came from the black population of the Horn of Africa.
Problems With This Argument
The problem is that the Erythraean Sea is close to Yemen, Egypt, and Arabia. So, by the logic of being close means you are that ethnic group, then why can’t the Phonecians have come from Yemen or Arabia?
Side note: the Erythaean Sea in Herodotus’s time was what we call the Red Sea today.
I will cover genetic evidence of the origins of the Phoenicians and Punics later in the post.
The Coin Depicting Hannibal Barca
The second and probably strongest argument. These coins date to the Second Punic War.
The coins show a black African (supposedly Hannibal) and an Asian elephant.
According to Pilany the Eldar in his book The Natural History, Hannibal had an elephant called Surus.
“Cato, in his Annals, while he has passed over the names of the generals in silence, has given that of an elephant called Surus, which fought with the greatest valour in the Carthaginian army and had lost one of its tusks”.
According to Scullard (and others) in his book The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World (Aspects of Greek and Roman Life), the name Surus translates to “Syrian” or “from the east”, therefore proving that Hannibal would have ridden an Asian elephant.
The argument is these coins, which date to the time of Hannibal Barca, are, in fact, Hannibal and his Asian elephant Surus, thus proving a black Hannibal Barca
Problems With This Argument:
- There are no inscriptions that tell us who this person was.
- The coins are not Punic but Etruscan.
- Cato describes the elephant as having lost one tusk, yet these coins clearly show the elephant still has both tusks.
- Surus does not have to be translated as “Syrian” or “from the East.” But it could instead be a nickname Romans would have given it for its broken tusk (surus or sudus being the name for a stake that was in use for fortifications).
- Etruscan, Greek, and Roman artists often depict exotic animals and black Africans on coins.
- In Greek, Roman, and Carthaginian coin-making traditions, excellent military generals and gods were shown wearing wreaths on their heads. Yet this person doesn’t have a wreath. This further supports the idea that he might have been a random man, perhaps an elephant tamer.
- Black Africans were already known to be elephant tamers. It could, therefore, depict an exotic person, a black African tamer, and an exotic Asian elephant.
Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius/Letter 85
The tiny Aethiopian orders the elephant to sink on its knees or to walk the rope.
Quick note: Pyrrhus invaded Italy using Asian elephants in 208-272 BC and could be a reference to that invasion instead. But this theory is not widely accepted now.
Punic Coins
This coin was minted in Iberia (Spain) and is said to be Hannibal Barca.
- This coin is Punic.
- It also dates to the time of Hannibal Barca.
- The wreath suggests that it is someone of importance.
Most Punic coins depict very Mediterranean-looking people, which is strange if one of your greatest generals and leader of a nation is a black man.
It is strange because, in the time of Alexander the Great, many coins in Greece portray Alexander. In the time of Julius Caesar, many Roman coins depicted Julius Caesar. But, if the Carthaginians wanted to depict Hannibal, they would go to Italy to make a coin with Hannibal’s appearance. Almost all Punic coins that have been found depict Mediterranean or North African people.
The problem is even the coin above could simply be another important Carthaginian person or even a Punic god. Although very often, the Greek, Roman, or Carthaginian coins portray their gods with the faces of excellent and achieved people living at the time.
In my opinion, I would not use either of these coins to prove whether Hannibal Barca was black or not because neither have inscriptions that give us a clue as to who they are.
Studies Of Skeletal Remains
Another popular argument made to say Hannibal Barca was black is by trying to claim that the Carthaginians were black or at least had a big black population.
They often cite these studies, although there are many more that they also cite.
Several studies here and here by S. O. Y. Keita have examined the skulls of Carthaginians and North Africans and concluded that many have Black African facial traits.
Jehan Desanges stated in his General History of Africa Vol. 2. Ancient Civilization of Africa:
“In the Punic burial grounds, negroid remains were not rare, and there were black auxiliaries in the Carthaginian army who were certainly not Nilotics.”
This conclusion is also based on the measurement of skulls.
M. C. Chamla and D. Ferembach (the study is in French), also using craniometrics, found that Protohistorical Algerians and Punics in the region of Tunisia had dominant Mediterranean elements. Still, Mechtoid features, as well as ‘Negroid’ traits, were present in some of the samples.
So these studies and many more that I have not covered all examine the skulls of Punic and ancient North Africans, which seem to suggest that they had Medditarian features, but a good amount had mixed or fully black African features. The common people, the aristocracy, and the higher classes of Carthaginian society had these black African or mixed black and Mediterranean features.
The Problem With The Methodology
Measuring skulls and craniometrics can serve a purpose in determining what someone’s face looks like. It is especially helpful regarding facial reconstructions. But they can also be very inaccurate in determining someone’s ethnic origin.
The Beachy Head woman in Britain dates back to the Roman occupation from 125 to 245 AD. Using similar techniques of craniometrics, they determined she was black. However, DNA studies show she was a southern European from Cyprus. So wildly off the mark there. That is by far not the only example.
The program Fordisc also uses skull measurements to determine race. There is a problem. In a study by Elliott, Marina, Collard, Mark titled Fordisc and the Determination of Ancestry from Cranial Measurements in 2009, they concluded that.
“Fordisc will only return a correct ancestry attribution when an unidentified specimen is more or less complete and belongs to one of the populations represented in the program’s reference samples. Even then, Fordisc can be expected to classify no more than 1 per cent of specimens with confidence”.
“This suggests that even in favourable conditions—when the focal specimen’s source population is present in the reference sample, the focal specimen is nearly complete, and its sex is known—Fordisc has no more than a 1 per cent chance of success.”
In other words, measuring skulls has many faults when determining ethnicity.
Genetics
None of these studies use the new, superior, and far more accurate science of genome-wide analysis. Genome-wide analysis can tell you exactly and definitively what someone’s ethnic background is.
By the way, I am not a geneticist, so here is a good video by a well-known geneticist, David Reich, that can help you with some of the basics of genetic studies and how they work.
Genetic Studies on Carthaginians.
Now, let us get into real science.
According to Marcus et al.(2020), Genetic history from the Middle Neolithic to present on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia:
“All six individuals from the Punic Villamar site were inferred to have substantial levels of ancient north African ancestry (point estimates ranging 20–35%.”
In other words, in Punic sites on Sardinia, the only non-Sardinian ancestry was North African because the Carthaginians colonised this part of Sardinia. There was no substantial sub-Saharan African ancestry.
This study by Sarno, Cillion, de Fanti, et al. (2021), Insights into Punic genetic signatures in the southern necropolis of Tharros (Sardinia), also came to a similar conclusion:
“our Punic samples reveal proximity to present-day North-African and Iberian (Spanish) populations”.
“With respect to the ancient Punic samples from Tharros, it is worth noting how they appear genetically closer to north African populations;”
Another study titled A Genetic History of Continuity and Mobility on The Iron Age Central Mediterranean shows that all the areas of Italy and Sardinia colonised by Punics saw an increase in North African ancestry and, again, not sub-Saharan ancestry.
In fact, in Kerkouane, a Carthaginian town, some samples cluster with modern Southern Europeans.
“We observe a highly heterogeneous population, spanning across from modern Mozabite populations to modern Sicilian populations.”
Remember that most of these samples are from before the Punic Wars.
By the time the Second Punic War ended, Carthage had taken many mercenaries from Spain and even central Europe, so I guess that people from Tunisia in North Africa would have a mix of European, North African and Levantine ancestry. Although surprisingly, Levantine ancestry was very small, so it is clear that they intermixed with North Africans fairly quickly.
Final Thought on The Question: Was Hannibal Barca Balck
I think that, as all the genetic data so far suggests that most of the Carthaginian people were North African, European, and Levantine, it would make sense that Hannibal was also a mix of all these populations.
After all, even at the height of the Roman Empire, black Africans were still a strange sight to them.
“After inspecting the wall near the rampart in Britain… just as he [Severus] was wondering what omen would present itself, an Ethiopian from a military unit, who was famous among buffoons and always a notable joker, met him with a garland of cypress. And when Severus, in a rage, ordered that the man be removed from his sight, troubled as he was by the man’s ominous colour and the ominous nature of the garland, [the Ethiopian] by way of jest cried, it is said, “You have been all things, you have conquered all things, now, O conqueror, be a god.”
(Historia Augusta, ‘Septimius Severus’, 22.4-5)
Surely, the Romans would have commented on the strange appearance of a black Hannibal Barca when Rome was still a modest republic and had even less contact with black African populations. He would have stuck out, especially considering that most Carthaginians are North African and Semitic. I think the reason the Romans did not bother describing him is most likely because he looked like an average Carthaginian.
There are no descriptions of Hannibal Barca, nor are there any representations that we can definitively say are of Hannibal Barca. I think the argument using coins, in this case, is weak, and that goes for both the black and semetic-looking ones, as neither of the coins has any inscriptions that say anything. Genetically, the argument for Hannibal Barca being black falls apart, and instead, proponents use shaky science (to put it politely) to push their ideas.
Conclusion
Was Hannibal Barca black?
So, let us re-cap.
Many of the points that raise the question of Hannibal Barca being black are:
- Some coins dated to the Second Punic War depict a black African man on one side and an Asian elephant on the other.
- Herodotus says the Phonecians came from a place near the Horn of Africa.
- Using craniometric studies suggests the Carthaginian population had many black and mixed people. Hannibal’s being Carthaginian would make it possible for him to be black or mixed.
The main problems with these arguments are:
- There is no way of confirming that the coin is supposed to represent Hannibal Barca. And we are not even sure Hannibal’s elephant was an Asian one.
- There are many coins that we know are Punic that also date to the time of Hannibal and show faces that are Semitic. But to be clear, we are not one hundred per cent sure that it is Hannibal.
- Craniometric studies are known to be faulty.
- Genetic evidence suggests that the Carthaginian population had people from the Levant, Europe, and North Africa, but no substantial black African ancestry has been found.
- No Roman describes him physically, probably because he looked like an average Carthaginian.
Again, I would like to finish this article by asking again to keep the conversation civil.
Thanks for reading, and do comment on whether you agree or disagree and why.
Check out our other posts.
Tell us what you think he could have looked like.