Another vie w of the history - that is the contribution made by the South to the North in the heart of the Mediterranean. Previously this field had been covered only as far as European civilizations were concerned, i.e., from Magna Graecia through Etruria and Rome, across the Po and the Alps and into the European dimensiono This book takes a new line and crosses the Straits of Sicily to look for traces of ancient or recent civilizations. The stream of developing civilization in Italy has received notable contributions from Africa: the wave of Punic and Carthaginian and later of Islamic influence which swept onto the shores of the Mediterranean. From the shores of Africa, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians and later the Arabs expanded into Sicily, Sardinia and the Italian mainland. Until now, no relation has been seen between these movements, occurring as they did in quite separate epochs and diftering greatly from each other as to detail. Rathèr, they have been considered as two distinct interludes in the course of civilized history: Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Romano-Byzantine, Teutonic, Latino-Frankish. Sabatino Moscati, who began his academic career as an arabist and later came to concentrate on Carthaginian studies, disputes the traditional interpretation of history, proposing - in a theory described by Braudel as almost« explosive” that the linchpin holding Mediterranean civilizations together is an Afro-Asian one. In this book, we ofter both the theory and a commentary by Fernand Braudel, which together make an original and highly significant contribution to the “new histories of the Mediterranean”. We hope these histories willlift the shroud of mystery and silence which for centuries has covered the peoples of the «other» Mediterranean, who once were but are no longer overwhelmed by the temporarily victorious culture of the North.