The Phoenicians invented the alphabet, founded Carthage, built one of history's greatest trading networks, and quietly shaped the modern world—yet most people have never heard their story.

In this episode of Previously On Earth, we explore the civilization behind our letters, the rise of Carthage, the mystery of their disappearance, and the forgotten legacy that still influences the world today.

Topics Covered: Phoenicians, Carthage, Hannibal, Alphabet History, Byblos, Tyrian Purple, Ancient Mediterranean, Ancient Trade, Archaeology, Ancient Civilizations, World History

Continue Your Journey Through History

🌀 Episode 1 – The Minoans

A brilliant Bronze Age civilization that vanished without explanation.

🔬 Episode 2 – Silence at the Lab

The strange stories of brilliant scientists who disappeared without a trace.

❄️ Episode 3 – The Franklin Expedition

129 men entered the Arctic. None came home.

💡 Episode 4 – Edison

The famous inventor... and the controversial legacy history often leaves out.

Here's something they left out of the history books.

Thomas Edison held over 1,000 patents. He's celebrated

as one of the greatest inventors in American history.

His name is on schools, awards, and a national park.

And a lot of what made him famous was built by people

you have never heard of.

This episode of Previously On Earth tells the whole

story. The invention factory at Menlo Park where

dozens of workers built what one man got credit for.

Lewis Howard Latimer, the Black inventor whose

improved lightbulb filament made electric light

affordable for ordinary families — and whose name

almost nobody knows. The broken promise to Nikola

Tesla that set off one of the ugliest business wars

in American history. The public animal electrocutions.

The electric chair, lobbied for by a man who spent

his whole life opposing the death penalty — because

it was good for business.

Edison was brilliant. He was also ruthless. And the

people who stood behind him and built what he took

credit for deserve to finally have their names said

out loud.

This is Previously On Earth. Episode 4.

In May of 1845, 129 men sailed out of the Thames on two

ships — HMS Erebus and HMS Terror — searching for the

Northwest Passage through the Arctic. It was supposed to

be the voyage that closed the last gap on the map.

Not one of them came home.

For 180 years, most of those men had no confirmed

identities. They were a number. A statistic in a

historical disaster that has fascinated researchers,

explorers, and historians for generations.

This past May, a DNA research team published findings

that changed that. Using genetic material matched to

living descendants tracked down through genealogical

research, they identified four more of those men by

name after 166 years of uncertainty. One of them —

a sailor found alone on a frozen ridge, in the wrong

uniform, with his own papers in his pocket — had been

a mystery since 1859.

He has a name now.

This episode tells the full story. The expedition, the

ice, the Victory Point Note — the only written record

ever recovered from the disaster. What actually killed

the crew. The Inuit oral testimony that described the

truth for 160 years while the Victorian establishment

refused to believe it. And the 2026 DNA breakthrough

that finally gave four of those men their names back

after a century and a half of silence.

This is one of the greatest mysteries in the history

of exploration. And it just got a little closer to

being solved. Episode 3.