Punics
The Punics (from Latin pūnicus, pl. pūnici) are usually known as Carthaginians, and were a people from Ancient Carthage in modern-day Tunisia, North Africa, who traced their origins to the Phoenicians. Punic is the English adjective derived from the Latin adjective punicus to describe anything Carthaginian.
The Punics are also known as Carthaginians because of their capital Carthage, a Phoenician city on the coast of North Africa. The Carthaginians were not related to the Berbers that lived in that region. After the fall of Phoenicia proper, their homeland in Lebanon, the Carthaginians were on their own. DNA tests show that the Phoenicians were most closely related to the Greeks and Romans. Berbers were only hired as mercenaries when Carthage went into war.
Unlike their Phoenician ancestors, Carthaginians had a landowning aristocracy who established a rule of the hinterland in Northern Africa and trans-Saharan trade routes. In later times one of these clans established a Hellenistic-inspired empire in Iberia, possibly having a foothold in western Gaul. Like other Phoenician people, their urbanized culture and economy were strongly linked to the sea. Overseas they established control over some coastal regions of Berber North Africa like modern-day Tunisia and Libya, of Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, the Balearic Islands, Malta, other small islands of the western Mediterranean and possibly along the Atlantic coast of Iberia. In the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily they had strong economic and political ties to the independent natives in the hinterland. Their naval presence and trade extended throughout the Mediterranean and beyond to the British Isles, the Canaries, and West Africa. Technical achievements of the Punic people of Carthage include the development of uncolored glass and the use of lacustrine limestone to improve the purity of molten iron.