The concept of national unity was unclear among the Phoenician cities. In the third millennium B.C., the term Canaanites was used for the people and "Canaan" for the region. This term designates the Syro-Palestinian area. The term is also used specifically for the Phoenicians in the Old Testament, and it lived on in the Mediterranean Diaspora. Also, Saint Augustine, talking about the population of Africa in his time, says that the peasants called themselves Kena’ani. Sidonians, another term extended meaning of the term "Phoenicians", is a linguistic phenomenon that once again emphasizes the lack of a unitary awareness among the Phoenicians.

In the present day concept, a people is a combination of persons who may defer in race and origin but who share a common geographical area, language, and historical and cultural background. The Phoenicians meet those conditions in a couple of aspects. Until the beginning of the Iron Age, around 1200 B.C., Syro-Palestinian history does not differentiate the centers on the coast that were to constitute Phoenicia from centers inland. In the city-state system that characterizes the history of this region, there is no appreciable difference between the centers that were to be Phoenician and those that were not. Not even the language, the religion or the craftsmanship are differentiated to any substantial extent.

Furthermore, one cannot underestimate the profound change that took place in the Syro-Palestinian area around 1200 B.C., one result of which was that the Phoenician cities emerged as quite independent entities. That time saw the invasion of the "Sea Peoples" which drove the great neighboring powers (Egypt and Mesopotamia) beyond the boundaries of the area, and witnessed the establishment in the hinterland of new peoples (the Hebrews and Aramaeans), so that the cities on the coats were "negatively" differentiated, in that they played no part in either of the two events.

But it was obviously not only a negative phenomenon. For the very reason that they were isolated and concentrated together along the coastline, the cities that we can now rightly call Phoenician strengthened the links among themselves. Colonization finally began: sporadic visits at first, and then true colonization, an outstanding feature of the Phoenician age. And with it came encounters and clashes with the expansion of Greece, and therefore an interrelated Mediterranean situation.

The invention and diffusion of the alphabet, the appearance of new divinities, the affirmation of new linguistic elements in the complex development of the languages spoken in the area, and the increasing importance of Egyptian influence in craft work were all factors that made Phoenician civilization autonomous rom 1200 B.C. onwards.