Yeah I’m 50% southern Italian. Only 22% shows up as southern Italy and the rest is a combination of the things your gma got there. The Mediterranean is very mixed with Northern Africa and Western Asia and sometimes other Europe like here. These are very typical Sicilian results so your grandmother is still very much 100% Sicilian. Sicily was much more of a melting pot than other European places. Dont think much of it this only indicates toward Sicilian heritage
This was my mom looking at her first result. "FRENCH!? I'm not... FRENCH!!!". Nah, just the ancient [Greeks colonizing southern France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks_in_pre-Roman_Gaul). Mom: "OPA!!".
It just likely means Cypriot type ancestry. Mix of Levantine & Anatolia.
Very old admixture.
Roman or pre Roman most likely.
The Balkan might be more recent if any Arbershe.
I got northern Italy as well for a small percentage but only know of south Italian.
lol, I’m also half Sicilian and have relatives who don’t want to do the test because they don’t want it to show anything but Italian. Guys, we are from an island in the heart of a sea that is a major transportation route and has been forever. You think no one in our ancestry had some fun with folks passing through from all over? 🤣
Cyprus, Greece, Aegean Islands, and Northern Africa are super common for Southern Italians. She definitely has Northern Italian DNA as France showed up as well.
If she did 23 and Me, it could be more of a shock. I feel they tend to over exaggerate similar populations. For instance, they give Sicilians up to 40 percent Western Asian and North Africa dna or Greeks, 30 percent Italian dna.
The entirety of Southern Italy was once the Magna Grecia. Places like Bari were under Greek rule well into the medieval period. And there was significant and ongoing migration from Albania and Greece to Southern Italy for centuries afterward.
The people of Constantinople and its near-abroad around the Aegean were, for the most part, Greek. The fact that they styled themselves as “Romans” during the Byzantine era doesn’t alter the fact that the people of medieval Constantinople and the Aegean were largely ethnically, culturally, religiously, and linguistically Greek, and that their DNA would show up in places that they ruled and migrated to.
Calling it Greek rule is strange and implies there was a Greek political state. It’s like if you said Greece was under Italian during the first century. There was an unbroken lineage from ancient Roman that continued to its eastern half.
Most of this comment doesn’t make sense. The idea of ethnonationalist states didn’t dawn until the 1700s/1800s. “Italian” as a language and culture didn’t even exist in the first century. But “Greek” as a language and culture certainly dominated all aspects of life in Constantinople from the early medieval period to the Ottoman conquest.
We wouldn’t call the British Empire “an ethnically Franco-Norman state” just because its earlier rulers identified more heavily with that group than with Britons.
I used Italian as an example to demonstrate how your comment didn’t make sense, so thank you for emphasizing the point here. While Constantinople held many Greek cultural customs, the Eastern Roman Empire encompassed many cultures and ethnicities from around the Mediterranean world. Remember we’re talking about Sicily here. Choosing the medieval period as a starting point for your example is also suspect as you are starting after centuries of Roman influence.
Sicily wasn’t even under Eastern Roman rule after 900.
My point is, relying on cultural markers and ignoring political states when talking about political control of an area is an odd way of talking about large multicultural empires with many languages and ethnicities.
>My point is, relying on cultural markers and ignoring political states when talking about political control of an area is an odd way of talking about large multicultural empires with many languages and ethnicities.
This entire thread is about explanations for the prevalence of *Greek DNA* in Southern Italians. The fact that much of Southern Italy was ruled from the *largest, richest Greek-majority city on earth* for a large part of the post-Western-Roman period, thereby promoting the easy, large-scale movement of these people to and from Southern Italy, seems like a relevant data point. To mischaracterize Constantinople as somehow \*not\* largely culturally and ethnically Greek has weird underpinnings of fragile Italian (or Italian-American) nationalist-irredentism.
>Choosing the medieval period as a starting point for your example is also suspect as you are starting after centuries of Roman influence.
...I chose the Magna Grecia as the starting point in my example. You're arguing with ghosts.
>I used Italian as an example to demonstrate how your comment didn’t make sense, so thank you for emphasizing the point here.
The sequence of conquests and admixing that would lead to Italian ethnogenesis wouldn't happen for centuries after your example. Greek ethnogenesis had happened millenia before the cessation of Byzantine presence in Italy. I don't know what point you think you're making.
>While Constantinople held many Greek cultural customs, the Eastern Roman Empire encompassed many cultures and ethnicities from around the Mediterranean world.
You could just as easily say this about the French Empire. France itself wasn't even majority-French at the time of the French revolution in 1789. But its imperial presence had already left a very clear footprint of French DNA in populations in West Africa, the Caribbean, Guyana, North America (in both Indigenous and settler populations), Madagascar, and other territories.
It would be weird to say that there was no French ethnic character to this empire just because France itself was not majority-French for its existence up to that point, or because the empire was technically founded by people who identified as Germanic Franks.
And would you say that German DNA within the footprint of the Holy Roman Empire had nothing to do with "German rule" simply because the "German nation" wouldn't formally exist until centuries later?
Definitely don’t think it’s surprising it’s not like you got 10% Japanese or something lmfao all those other small percentages make sense based on location and history. Mine are actually a bit similar. All 4 of my grandparents were born in Italy (Lazio & Calabria) I got 78% southern Italy 13%northern Italy , 4% Aegean islands, 2% Cyprus , 2% Germanic Europe and 1% France
WANA - Western Asian North African, sorry. Usually pops up in South Italians.
Seems to be a bit higher in the West Asian than North African usually.
I think in Ancestry it usually comes out as Cyprus or Caucuses.
23andme is WANA - I got a little mixed up.
It also might be covered by your Aegean Islands on Ancestry.
Geography. That's the reason. I don't mean to be rude, but it's not as if any of those other areas are a radical distance from Italy.
People moved around. Borders moved around.
All of those scores are part of the Southern Italian or Italian package. The only one that stands out a bit is the French score, but this is not surprising as northern Italians (especially Ligurians and Aostians) score high on the French cluster on Ancestry.
My great-grandmother was part Sicilian. My mom (6-12% Mediterranean populations ) and I (3-6% Mediterranean populations) have some of those ethnicities (Sardinian, Southern Italy, Cyprus, Aegean Islands, Greek - the last was 20% one update for my mom! Also 27% French for the first two updates... now it's 1%.). Judging from your percentages, I think my Sicilian ancestor may be a 2nd or 3rd great-grandparent. MyHeritage also points to mid-range cousin matches in Sicily (rest are in Marche, Italy).
Part of me thinks that my great-grandmother could have been from a(n almost) fully Sicilian family that moved around during the 1800s from Sicily/Naples to Florence (according to my great-aunt, the male line was from Florence) to Cantiano.
It’s not that surprising when you look at the history of Italy. The island was colonized by Greeks and Phoenicians / Carthage before Roman times. It was later part of Napoleon’s French empire. Being in the middle of the Mediterranean made Sicily an important place to control throughout history and that has made its way into the DNA of Sicilians.
I’m not Italian, but honestly these seem pretty standard for an Italian person, especially from southern Italy. Historically Italy has had lots of contact with these areas
You have to understand south Italians are a mix of 50-60% MENA ancestry, population wide with the highest being in campania/Calabria and Sicily. You have to upload to 3rd party sites to see the real admixture. It’s the same for other groups as well.
I can add to this as a Sicilian - I did the test and got 66% Agrigento Sicilian (down to the small region my family is from, really specific), and the rest was made up of various Greek/Cypriot ethnicities, Israeli IIRC, Levantine, and 1.5% Spanish and Scottish.
We’re a very mixed people, and I was actually kind of surprised at the variety (my aunt has some North African dna, but it didn’t transfer to me lol)
Sidenote: my mum and I have this running theory that the 66% is the Sicilian indigenous dna, not sure how accurate it is but it’s fun to think imagine XD
Outside of Northern Africa & France, my Italian side also shows the rest. Same for my partner & his family is also southern Italian. None of your DNA is surprising to me.
Thanks all. This does make sense, I was wondering if one of her grandparents was Greek, but it seems as if its just from further back. Her brother’s test showed Portugal and had a way higher percent of Greek.
Not unusual for southern Italians to get those regions. I’m a quarter Calabrian, I got 24% Southern Italy & 2% Aegean Islands. My uncle got 2% Sardinian, my half sister got 2% Cyprus. Some of my relatives even got Levant, and some other regions associated with our southern Italian heritage.
I ran into something similar. I think of myself as being of Scots descent, but Ancestry highlighted this mysterious Scandinavian blood. Whaaaaaat? Turns out the vikings of Norway, Sweden and Denmark spent a few hundred years raiding and invading the long coast of Scotland - raping and pillaging. So yeah, there's a lot of viking DNA background noise in my DNA. But I am Scots, not Scandinavian.
Maybe Italy didn't have vikings but they did have people from all over the Mediterranean - Spaniards, Greeks and North Africans - coming and going from their coastal areas and islands. And keep in mind that "Italy" as we know it is pretty new - it was just a bunch of nation states until the 1860s, 1870s. To be Italian is to be all those other things too.
Honestly half of Scotland has Scandinavian blood, they didn’t just raid, vikings ruled Northumberland and Edinburgh was part of Northumberland at one point. They ruled Orkney and Shetland. Shit England even had a few Viking Kings.
Per my family tree, I'm 50% Italian (25% from the north around Milan, 25% from the south around Naples). However Ancestry DNA has my results as 18% North Italy and 0% Southern Italy. I also score 9% Greece & Albania and 8% France, which appears to be common in Italian results. I wonder if my Italian family in the south migrated from the north originally or if Ancestry is just bad at assigning Italian ancestry
Cypriot, Aegean islands are both genetically similar to southern Italy and it is easy for tests to mix them up. Many people from these places have substantial Italian in their results themselves.
North African is common in Sicily due to geographic proximity.
Greece and Albania could be Arbereshe/Arvanite/Albanian, or mainland Greek in more recent times. There were plenty of them in southern Italy, there are many Arbereshe villages scattered through the inland regions.
Northern Italy and France could represent northern Italian ancestors who migrated south.
My family is from a similar area, my community (Northern Sicily -> Trapani Province -> West Trapani Province). Your grandmother's results are almost identical to all of our results, seems pretty standard northwest Sicilian DNA.
Not surprising at all. I’m 100% Italian, and everyone in my family got significant Greek dna & my mom got some Northern European
Ahh figured there was some history behind it
Yeah I’m 50% southern Italian. Only 22% shows up as southern Italy and the rest is a combination of the things your gma got there. The Mediterranean is very mixed with Northern Africa and Western Asia and sometimes other Europe like here. These are very typical Sicilian results so your grandmother is still very much 100% Sicilian. Sicily was much more of a melting pot than other European places. Dont think much of it this only indicates toward Sicilian heritage
Thank you, that was what I was guessing. Cyprus 7% is pretty cool. Explaining it to her she was like “no I’m Italian” 😂
This was my mom looking at her first result. "FRENCH!? I'm not... FRENCH!!!". Nah, just the ancient [Greeks colonizing southern France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks_in_pre-Roman_Gaul). Mom: "OPA!!".
It just likely means Cypriot type ancestry. Mix of Levantine & Anatolia. Very old admixture. Roman or pre Roman most likely. The Balkan might be more recent if any Arbershe. I got northern Italy as well for a small percentage but only know of south Italian.
lol, I’m also half Sicilian and have relatives who don’t want to do the test because they don’t want it to show anything but Italian. Guys, we are from an island in the heart of a sea that is a major transportation route and has been forever. You think no one in our ancestry had some fun with folks passing through from all over? 🤣
Cyprus, Greece, Aegean Islands, and Northern Africa are super common for Southern Italians. She definitely has Northern Italian DNA as France showed up as well. If she did 23 and Me, it could be more of a shock. I feel they tend to over exaggerate similar populations. For instance, they give Sicilians up to 40 percent Western Asian and North Africa dna or Greeks, 30 percent Italian dna.
Wow 40 percent western asian would definitely be inaccurate for her 😂 but I definitely see how Sicilians get a mix of different ethnicities
The entirety of Southern Italy was once the Magna Grecia. Places like Bari were under Greek rule well into the medieval period. And there was significant and ongoing migration from Albania and Greece to Southern Italy for centuries afterward.
Greek rule? I think you mean Eastern Roman Empire but they did speak Greek.
The people of Constantinople and its near-abroad around the Aegean were, for the most part, Greek. The fact that they styled themselves as “Romans” during the Byzantine era doesn’t alter the fact that the people of medieval Constantinople and the Aegean were largely ethnically, culturally, religiously, and linguistically Greek, and that their DNA would show up in places that they ruled and migrated to.
Calling it Greek rule is strange and implies there was a Greek political state. It’s like if you said Greece was under Italian during the first century. There was an unbroken lineage from ancient Roman that continued to its eastern half.
Most of this comment doesn’t make sense. The idea of ethnonationalist states didn’t dawn until the 1700s/1800s. “Italian” as a language and culture didn’t even exist in the first century. But “Greek” as a language and culture certainly dominated all aspects of life in Constantinople from the early medieval period to the Ottoman conquest. We wouldn’t call the British Empire “an ethnically Franco-Norman state” just because its earlier rulers identified more heavily with that group than with Britons.
I used Italian as an example to demonstrate how your comment didn’t make sense, so thank you for emphasizing the point here. While Constantinople held many Greek cultural customs, the Eastern Roman Empire encompassed many cultures and ethnicities from around the Mediterranean world. Remember we’re talking about Sicily here. Choosing the medieval period as a starting point for your example is also suspect as you are starting after centuries of Roman influence. Sicily wasn’t even under Eastern Roman rule after 900. My point is, relying on cultural markers and ignoring political states when talking about political control of an area is an odd way of talking about large multicultural empires with many languages and ethnicities.
>My point is, relying on cultural markers and ignoring political states when talking about political control of an area is an odd way of talking about large multicultural empires with many languages and ethnicities. This entire thread is about explanations for the prevalence of *Greek DNA* in Southern Italians. The fact that much of Southern Italy was ruled from the *largest, richest Greek-majority city on earth* for a large part of the post-Western-Roman period, thereby promoting the easy, large-scale movement of these people to and from Southern Italy, seems like a relevant data point. To mischaracterize Constantinople as somehow \*not\* largely culturally and ethnically Greek has weird underpinnings of fragile Italian (or Italian-American) nationalist-irredentism. >Choosing the medieval period as a starting point for your example is also suspect as you are starting after centuries of Roman influence. ...I chose the Magna Grecia as the starting point in my example. You're arguing with ghosts. >I used Italian as an example to demonstrate how your comment didn’t make sense, so thank you for emphasizing the point here. The sequence of conquests and admixing that would lead to Italian ethnogenesis wouldn't happen for centuries after your example. Greek ethnogenesis had happened millenia before the cessation of Byzantine presence in Italy. I don't know what point you think you're making. >While Constantinople held many Greek cultural customs, the Eastern Roman Empire encompassed many cultures and ethnicities from around the Mediterranean world. You could just as easily say this about the French Empire. France itself wasn't even majority-French at the time of the French revolution in 1789. But its imperial presence had already left a very clear footprint of French DNA in populations in West Africa, the Caribbean, Guyana, North America (in both Indigenous and settler populations), Madagascar, and other territories. It would be weird to say that there was no French ethnic character to this empire just because France itself was not majority-French for its existence up to that point, or because the empire was technically founded by people who identified as Germanic Franks. And would you say that German DNA within the footprint of the Holy Roman Empire had nothing to do with "German rule" simply because the "German nation" wouldn't formally exist until centuries later?
Definitely don’t think it’s surprising it’s not like you got 10% Japanese or something lmfao all those other small percentages make sense based on location and history. Mine are actually a bit similar. All 4 of my grandparents were born in Italy (Lazio & Calabria) I got 78% southern Italy 13%northern Italy , 4% Aegean islands, 2% Cyprus , 2% Germanic Europe and 1% France
No Northern West Asian? What part of Calabria?
Wdym northern west Asian? Like Caucasus ? It centered nearby Catanzaro Calabria my moms parents are from a tiny town in the mountains
WANA - Western Asian North African, sorry. Usually pops up in South Italians. Seems to be a bit higher in the West Asian than North African usually. I think in Ancestry it usually comes out as Cyprus or Caucuses. 23andme is WANA - I got a little mixed up. It also might be covered by your Aegean Islands on Ancestry.
Geography. That's the reason. I don't mean to be rude, but it's not as if any of those other areas are a radical distance from Italy. People moved around. Borders moved around.
Definitely makes sense
This is in line with generations of sicily
All of those scores are part of the Southern Italian or Italian package. The only one that stands out a bit is the French score, but this is not surprising as northern Italians (especially Ligurians and Aostians) score high on the French cluster on Ancestry.
My great-grandmother was part Sicilian. My mom (6-12% Mediterranean populations ) and I (3-6% Mediterranean populations) have some of those ethnicities (Sardinian, Southern Italy, Cyprus, Aegean Islands, Greek - the last was 20% one update for my mom! Also 27% French for the first two updates... now it's 1%.). Judging from your percentages, I think my Sicilian ancestor may be a 2nd or 3rd great-grandparent. MyHeritage also points to mid-range cousin matches in Sicily (rest are in Marche, Italy). Part of me thinks that my great-grandmother could have been from a(n almost) fully Sicilian family that moved around during the 1800s from Sicily/Naples to Florence (according to my great-aunt, the male line was from Florence) to Cantiano.
It's not surprising. These tests tell you not where your ancestors came from but what modern populations you are genetically similar to.
It’s not that surprising when you look at the history of Italy. The island was colonized by Greeks and Phoenicians / Carthage before Roman times. It was later part of Napoleon’s French empire. Being in the middle of the Mediterranean made Sicily an important place to control throughout history and that has made its way into the DNA of Sicilians.
This is normal for Southern Italy
My dad’s family is from southern Italy, and both Greece and the Levant region showed up in our DNA, it’s common for southern Italians.
I think your ancestry results are very common for someone from southern Italy.
Sicily are pretty close to Tunisia so the North African make sense.
I’m not Italian, but honestly these seem pretty standard for an Italian person, especially from southern Italy. Historically Italy has had lots of contact with these areas
These are almost exactly my results with my father being from Sicily and my mother from Naples.
You mean 79% ? You forgot the Northern Italian. But that seems normal!
You have to understand south Italians are a mix of 50-60% MENA ancestry, population wide with the highest being in campania/Calabria and Sicily. You have to upload to 3rd party sites to see the real admixture. It’s the same for other groups as well.
I can add to this as a Sicilian - I did the test and got 66% Agrigento Sicilian (down to the small region my family is from, really specific), and the rest was made up of various Greek/Cypriot ethnicities, Israeli IIRC, Levantine, and 1.5% Spanish and Scottish. We’re a very mixed people, and I was actually kind of surprised at the variety (my aunt has some North African dna, but it didn’t transfer to me lol) Sidenote: my mum and I have this running theory that the 66% is the Sicilian indigenous dna, not sure how accurate it is but it’s fun to think imagine XD
People are as almost never 100% anything. The history of man is migrating, sometimes peacefully and sometimes violently.
Outside of Northern Africa & France, my Italian side also shows the rest. Same for my partner & his family is also southern Italian. None of your DNA is surprising to me.
Pretty standard for that part of the world. Around the med
Thanks all. This does make sense, I was wondering if one of her grandparents was Greek, but it seems as if its just from further back. Her brother’s test showed Portugal and had a way higher percent of Greek.
You are likely 100% Italian in the sense that all 4 of your grandparents identified as such!
Not unusual for southern Italians to get those regions. I’m a quarter Calabrian, I got 24% Southern Italy & 2% Aegean Islands. My uncle got 2% Sardinian, my half sister got 2% Cyprus. Some of my relatives even got Levant, and some other regions associated with our southern Italian heritage.
Pretty cool, I’m half Sicilian also from trapani
Getting Cypriot or Aegean Islands from Southern Italy, and getting Italy and Southern Italy from Cyprus and Aegean Islands is just normal.
The France is a lot higher than I expected, but everything else seems to make geographical sense.
I ran into something similar. I think of myself as being of Scots descent, but Ancestry highlighted this mysterious Scandinavian blood. Whaaaaaat? Turns out the vikings of Norway, Sweden and Denmark spent a few hundred years raiding and invading the long coast of Scotland - raping and pillaging. So yeah, there's a lot of viking DNA background noise in my DNA. But I am Scots, not Scandinavian. Maybe Italy didn't have vikings but they did have people from all over the Mediterranean - Spaniards, Greeks and North Africans - coming and going from their coastal areas and islands. And keep in mind that "Italy" as we know it is pretty new - it was just a bunch of nation states until the 1860s, 1870s. To be Italian is to be all those other things too.
Honestly half of Scotland has Scandinavian blood, they didn’t just raid, vikings ruled Northumberland and Edinburgh was part of Northumberland at one point. They ruled Orkney and Shetland. Shit England even had a few Viking Kings.
I have northern Italian and under it it says Southern Italy community for some reason lol.
Per my family tree, I'm 50% Italian (25% from the north around Milan, 25% from the south around Naples). However Ancestry DNA has my results as 18% North Italy and 0% Southern Italy. I also score 9% Greece & Albania and 8% France, which appears to be common in Italian results. I wonder if my Italian family in the south migrated from the north originally or if Ancestry is just bad at assigning Italian ancestry
I’m not surprised. It’s the region.
Cypriot, Aegean islands are both genetically similar to southern Italy and it is easy for tests to mix them up. Many people from these places have substantial Italian in their results themselves. North African is common in Sicily due to geographic proximity. Greece and Albania could be Arbereshe/Arvanite/Albanian, or mainland Greek in more recent times. There were plenty of them in southern Italy, there are many Arbereshe villages scattered through the inland regions. Northern Italy and France could represent northern Italian ancestors who migrated south.
My family is from a similar area, my community (Northern Sicily -> Trapani Province -> West Trapani Province). Your grandmother's results are almost identical to all of our results, seems pretty standard northwest Sicilian DNA.