Free Destroy Carthage by Alan Lloyd Page A

the bush fires, the timbers of the rain belt - bear an authenticity beyond the range of guesswork. Comparison with reports by European voyagers a thousand years later shows remarkable consistency.
    When it comes to identifying specific locations there is more doubt. The vagueness, if not deceptiveness, of the navi­gational information is conspicuous, especially in relation to that area most vulnerable to rival penetration, the Moroccan coast. Of the colonies founded, only two can be placed with some assurance: Thymiaterion, on the river Sebou, and the island of Cerne (Heme) in the bay of the Rio de Oro, between Cape Bojador and Port Etienne.
    There is also a striking omission. While mentioning a river Lixus south of 'Soloeis' (Cape Santin), Hanno gives no indica­tion of Lixus itself, a commercial station already established beyond Tangier. Probably, his Lixite interpreters were not natives in the true sense but seasoned colonists. The Troglo­dytes, or cave-dwellers, are introduced on hearsay. Ancient writers apply the name to tribes in various parts of Africa, Herodotus adding to their alleged fleetness that their speech was like the screeching of owls. From Cerne, the base for Hanno's explorations, two southerly voyages are described. The first, and shorter, ap­pears to have terminated at the delta of the Senegal, identified in the report as the 'Chretes' and the river of hippopotami and crocodiles. The second and more sensational reconnaissance seems to have taken the travellers beyond Cape Verde, the wooded range twelve days from Cerne, into regions strange even to the Lixites.
    If modern exegesis is correct in recognizing 'West Horn' as Bissagos Bay, and the 'Chariot of the Gods' as Mount Kakulima, then the Carthaginians have a strong claim to have been the first civilized people to have explored the coasts of Portu­guese Guinea and French Equatorial Africa.
    True, Herodotus believed that Phoenician mariners had cir­cumnavigated Africa in the 7th century, but the tale is enigmatical. Later, Xerxes of Persia promised, somewhat less than magnanimously, to pardon the condemned courtier Sataspes if he sailed round the continent. Sataspes indeed travelled south from Tangier beyond the Saharan fringe, but just where he turned back is unknown. In any case, he could hardly have got so far without Phoenician, probably Carth­aginian, co-operation.
    By comparison, the scale of Hanno's expedition was grandi­ose. The Atlantic coast was not merely navigated but stationed to a point near the tropics. According to extreme interpola­tion, the 'Chariot of the Gods' was the volcanic Mount Cameroon, carrying the exploration beyond Cape Palmas to the bight of Biafra, though this seems unlikely even ignoring the sailing times.
    Finally, the closing reference to 'Gorillas' has raised dispute. The giant anthropoid apes were named, after Hanno's descrip­tion, by their modern discoverers. Scholars are divided as to whether the report itself concerns apes or human beings, one school asserting that the captives were hairy Pigmies, another that they were apes, but specifically chimpanzees. At all events, the skins were a sufficient novelty in their day to be placed on public show at Carthage.
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    While Hanno sailed south, other mariners turned north up the western coast of Europe to Brittany. Their quest was not for gold but tin, increasingly valuable to a developing Punic bronze industry. The inspiration came from Tarshish. The Tartessians traded with a Breton people, the Oestrymnians (in legend, of Spanish origin), knowing from them of Ireland and England. At Gades, Carthaginian merchants were well-placed to learn of such connections. They resolved to tap the northern trade.
    Even less is known of Punic exploration in the dangerous waters of Biscay than of the southern expeditions. The lengths to which the pioneers would go to preserve their secrets are mentioned by Strabo, who cites the deliberate wrecking of vessels by captains who