A Semitic people of ancient Phoenicia in southern Syria, of unknown origin, but culturally descended from the Canaanites of the 2nd millennium bc, who occupied the coastal plain of modern Lebanon and Syria in the 1st millennium bc and derived their prosperity from trade and manufacturing industries in textiles, glass, metalware, carved ivory, wood, and jewellery. Their trading contacts extended throughout Asia, and reached westwards as far as Africa (where they founded Carthage), Spain, and possibly Britain. The Phoenicians continued to thrive under Assyrian and then Persian suzerainty until 322 bc, when the capital, Tyre, was sacked and the country incorporated in the Greek world by Alexander the Great.