The Italian Genome-Fiorito et al 2015

[Danelaw]

The worst part are some stormfronter replies in Razib Khan's post imo

I do think that at least several of them are Zionist psychos. Look how they got excited as soon as genetic similarities between Sicilians and Ashkenazis are mentioned. One of then was crying because McDonald (and 99.99% of WNs) don't consider the Jews as white. They almost got an orgasm with the idea of linking jews and Europeans. Shilling getting stronger.

 

[Angela]

I do think that at least several of them are Zionist psychos. Look how they got worked up as soon as genetic similarities between Sicilians and Ashkenazis are mentioned. One of then was crying because McDonald (and 99.99% of WNs) don't consider the Jews as white. They almost got an orgasm with the idea of linking jews and Europeans. Shelling getting stronger.

That's absolute rot. All the Jews I know, and I know a LOT of them, love Italy and Italians. Most of them quite like the idea that the Ashkenazim might have been formed by some admixture with Italians, even if it's unlikely. Spare me all the tripe about Hollywood too. It's Mario Puzo who wrote The Godfather, and Francis Ford Coppola who directed it. You can throw Martin Scorcese and all his movies in there too. You might not understand it, and I don't myself, but there's a certain perverse pride in some Italian Americans about these people. There's a fascination, and a sort of perverse admiration for them on the part of non Italian Americans as well. I suppose for the Italians it's that it's just another example of "Italians Do It Better", a popular tee shirt here. For the non-Italians, I wondered about it myself. Maybe it's because while their brutality is portrayed, they're still recognizably Italian: they still take care of their families, they still love to cook and eat, they don't involve "civilians" in the mayhem etc. In other words, there's still some humanity in them, unlike the other ethnic "mafias" that are portrayed in the media. None of this applies to me. I'm all for sending them to jail, no matter if they're good fathers and grandfathers or not.

I don't know why I'm bothering to remind you, but you have one infraction left before you get an automatic ban, so I advise you to reverse direction.

 

[Fire Haired14]

@About Jews,

I'm pretty sure Italian Jews are basically the same as Ashkenazi Jews, but maybe not(I'll ask for analysis of Italian Jews later). And Ashkenazi Jews historically are supposed to be from Italy or Balkans. Italy is a good candidate for their European ancestry.

@Mafia,

It's not a big deal that people idolize them. It's the same reason people idolize cowboys, drug lords, and gangsters. Yeah, Mafias are evil and they shouldn't be idolized so much. However they're heros/role models especially boys which is okay. Few actually think the Mafia is okay.

 

[MOESAN]

Well, goodness knows who chose it, because it's not very representative of her. When you google her, these are the first two pictures that come up.

I find her very beautiful, and Sophia Loren as well.

However, there's a lot of variety in Italy, even in the south; these women are just as Italian, and Sicilian as well:

If you want to go to the center of the country, you can get this...

But also this....

This is a very, very, Tuscan look. You can see it all over paintings of the Italian Renaissance, and later.

People just think in stereotypes because that's what the media portrays, no matter the nationality or ethnic group involved.

beautiful girls indeed I could attract a massive males immigration into Italy: more problems!
that said, I discard almost evrytime actors and actresses portays because they are not reprensentative of common population. Selection (not natural!) is at play the most often.
I observed too that politicians are very poor representative people of common folks in their lands. But I learned politicians are often of more foreign origin(s) than the basic citizen man; as actors by the way. "à beau mentir qui vient de loin" we say in France. Concerning cinema, exotism and artificial esthetic rules are mixed one together.

 

[MOESAN]

From Supp Data

"HIgh IBD between NW Africa and Italy
South Italy(inclu. Sardinia) gets extremly high IBD with NW Africa, suggesting NW African ancestry.
Although other Italians also get much higher IBD with NW Africa than with West Asia, much of it is .25+
If anything this points towards European ancestry in NW Africa."

What do you name "extremely high IBD": compared with what? and ancestry sharing needs to be precised: what is the geographic origin of the shared IBD?
I'm almost sure we have some light common imput with NWA but at what level?
I'm intrested if you have some details. THanks beforehand.

 

[Danelaw]

Claudia Cardinale with her husband Pasquale Squitieri and daughter Claudia Squitieri.

Young Claudia

 

[MOESAN]

Danelow: I had not red your precedent post about Jews. I see you are a bit "old fashion teached" to stay correct with you: a bit nordic supremacist perhaps??? based upon rubbish.
You have to study more deeper anthropology and genetics I think.

 

[DuPidh]

Claudia Cardinale with her husband Pasquale Squitieri and daughter Claudia Squitieri.

Young Claudia

She looks like somebody made her by hand, custom made

 

[Angela]

She looks like somebody made her by hand, custom made

Her figure's not all that unusual in Italy, if that's what you mean. At least, it didn't use to be. Now they all starve themselves to get that stick thin look, but not so long ago a lot of women had a full, hour glass figure, without being fat. That's why some Italian women had a hard time fitting into American cut clothes...way too tight at the bust, and huge at the waist. It required tailor altering almost everything purchased.

Different "ethnic" groups are built "differently". It's all genetics. Some women are sort of straight up and down, whether thin or fat, which I see a lot of here, some put weight on their bottom half, like a lot of black and hispanic women and even some Middle Eastern women, and some have a higher percentage of women with an "hour glass" figure. To approximate that look, women here all seem to be getting breast implants, and some even go to the extreme of having ribs removed, like Cher.

Like I said, it's all about the genes.

This is Sophia Loren in her seventies at the 2010 Golden Globes. She's also very disciplined about her diet, sleep patterns etc., and she says she does do some light exercise, more than she did when she was a young woman. To be fair, I think she had some work on her face.

Some Italian actresses have resisted the urge to starve themselves. Again, talk about good genes. This is Manuela Arcuri and her brother. They're from Calabria.

 

[Angela]

beautiful girls indeed I could attract a massive males immigration into Italy: more problems!
that said, I discard almost evrytime actors and actresses portays because they are not reprensentative of common population. Selection (not natural!) is at play the most often.
I observed too that politicians are very poor representative people of common folks in their lands. But I learned politicians are often of more foreign origin(s) than the basic citizen man; as actors by the way. "à beau mentir qui vient de loin" we say in France. Concerning cinema, exotism and artificial esthetic rules are mixed one together.

Well, I was responding to Razib's choice of an actress to represent Italians, so I showed other actresses. Plus, I don't like to post "civilians" unless I have their permission or they've posted themselves on line and I'm sure of their ethnicity. For "real", average Italians of my own areas, I did post pictures.

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...talian-villages-in-Eastern-Liguria-NW-Toscana

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/29763-People-of-the-Appennino-Reggiano?highlight=people+Parma

Seriously, I totally agree that actors and actresses are going to be better looking than the average person in any country. Still, in the days before the globalization of taste, the typical actress or model from Italy wasn't going to look like the typical actress or model from Finland or the U.S. They still reflected their ethnicity. Also, the actresses I chose to post may be exotic in other countries, but they're not exotic in Italy, not even Sophia Loren, who is always spoken of in that way.

Sophia Loren

Maria Bartiromo, a famous television financial analyst. In less "progressive" times, the Wall Street types used to call her the "money honey". The face shape is a little different and she highlights her hair, but otherwise...

As for politicians, it's not quite that way in Italy. You have a number of southern Italians in political office in northern Italy, but immigration from other countries is a relatively recent phenomenon. The few who are of mixed ancestry and in government are known.

None of the women members of the current Italian cabinet are of foreign ancestry for example.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...-cabinet-2014?highlight=Women+Italian+cabinet

Ed. it was the wrong link

 

[Angela]

@About Jews,

I'm pretty sure Italian Jews are basically the same as Ashkenazi Jews, but maybe not(I'll ask for analysis of Italian Jews later). And Ashkenazi Jews historically are supposed to be from Italy or Balkans. Italy is a good candidate for their European ancestry.

It depends what you mean by "Italian" Jews. The "original" Italian Jews, the Italkim, are different from the Ashkenazim. They're more similar to Romaniotes or Greek Jews, and Turkish Jews. They also have their own separate rite, different from that of either the Ashkenazim or the Sephardim. I find them fascinating. I wonder how much of their ancestry actually goes back to the Jewish populations of the Roman Era.

This PCA is from the Atzmon paper:

Over the years, however, Sephardic Jews came to Italy, and eventually Ashkenazim as well. Amazingly, there wasn't a lot of intermarriage between the groups for a long time, probably because they did follow different religious rites.

Anyway, that's why you can find Italian Jews with very old "Italian" surnames, with Sephardic surnames, and with Ashkenazi surnames.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Jews

 

[MOESAN]

Well, I was responding to Razib's choice of an actress to represent Italians, so I showed other actresses. Plus, I don't like to post "civilians" unless I have their permission or they've posted themselves on line and I'm sure of their ethnicity. For "real", average Italians of my own areas, I did post pictures.

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...talian-villages-in-Eastern-Liguria-NW-Toscana

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/29763-People-of-the-Appennino-Reggiano?highlight=people+Parma

Seriously, I totally agree that actors and actresses are going to be better looking than the average person in any country. Still, in the days before the globalization of taste, the typical actress or model from Italy wasn't going to look like the typical actress or model from Finland or the U.S. They still reflected their ethnicity. Also, the actresses I chose to post may be exotic in other countries, but they're not exotic in Italy, not even Sophia Loren, who is always spoken of in that way.

Sophia Loren

Maria Bartiromo, a famous television financial analyst. In less "progressive" times, the Wall Street types used to call her the "money honey". The face shape is a little different and she highlights her hair, but otherwise...

As for politicians, it's not quite that way in Italy. You have a number of southern Italians in political office in northern Italy, but immigration from other countries is a relatively recent phenomenon. The few who are of mixed ancestry and in government are known.

None of the women members of the current Italian cabinet are of foreign ancestry for example.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...-cabinet-2014?highlight=Women+Italian+cabinet

Ed. it was the wrong link[/QUOTE


No problem Angela
I know you know! My post was more for some possible new forumers than for yourself or other "well trained" forumers.
It's true pictures actressesses, whatever the weight of artificial esthetism are (or ware?) on statistically a bit different from country to country, but that doesn't make them a good subject of study for metrics anthropology. No big matter.

 

[moore2moore]

Stepping away from actresses for a moment, and going back to what the OP was discussing, here are my thoughts:

I have profound respect for some of the authors involved in this paper, but some of their techniques left me scratching my head in amazement. Not the positive kind.

1. They attempt to draw broad inferences about Calabrians by a sample of 12 individuals from the most cosmopolitan southern city (Reggio)? Calabria is 150 miles long and 15,0000 square kilometers. It's full of inpenetrable valleys and peaks, which any fool can tell are genetically quite disparate. I question the value of this data. It would be like ignoring the inland (barbagia) of Sardinia and taking samples from some seaside resort. That doesn't quite work.

2. Where are the samples from rural places, for that matter? Nothing from Abruzzo? Really? Nothing from Molise? These are some of the most unspoiled, un-invaded, un-admixed parts of Italy. Why not use them as a baseline? Why not compare them to the neighboring regions to see if the hypotheses actually applies?

3. For that matter, nothing from Campania? Really? I would think that rural Campania would be a good baseline, because of its Central Italian location, to compare the validity of the other Central Italian data. I would suspect the old Greek settlements in Campania near Naples would be a good place to check the southern Italian data. Strange that this huge and significant region was left out.

4. Perhaps it is the low sample sizes and the other obvious defects in the methodology, but I'm assuming that is why the people from Val D'Aosta resemble so closely some of the southern Italians according to this study? That just doesn't pass the smell test.

Here's the bottom line:

-Italy is a loooong country, with many isolated pockets throughout. Of course there will be clines.

-But, the clines in Italy are not that different from the clines in France, Spain, Germany, Ukraine, or Sweden. Any time you have that large of territory (large by European standards), you will have a cline.

-Furthermore, anytime you have a large nation, different regions will have claims to speaking a different language and culture. Southern French dialect is SO different from mainstream French, and those folks looked to Italy for much of their history. Ditto for the Catalans in Spain.

But, there seems to be something close to an obsession online with people trying to divide Italians. The implications are troubling: As one author put it (summarizing), it's the ever-present search to draw distinctions between the people who star in Jersey Shore and the people who produced Da Vinci.

It's not healthy, and it's insulting to all Italians. I am unaware of any other people who have to tolerate speculation that all of their national accomplishers were really another ethnic group. Watch the History Channel any week, or read an online board:

1. The Etruscans invented city planning, had an advanced alphabet, were brilliant in engineering, etc. The MUST have been Anatolian.

2. Columbus is responsible for connecting the New and Old World (notice I didn't say "discovering"). He was a great Navigator. He must have secretly been [Spanish, Jewish, English, etc.)

3. Da Vinci / Michelangelo were geniuses. They must have secretly been [French, Jewish, etc.)

It's just insane.

Here we have yet another study with dubious methods that is in this same vein. The findings don't pass the straight face test.

Then there are the posts who per usual don't understand that "Italy" was actually unified for much of its history. More than most people know, and certainly as long as Poland, Germany, etc., nations we accept as national wholes:

-Italy first got its name c. 1000 BC, based on the name of an eponymous tribe living in what is now Calabria.

-It became a unified, cohesive political unit in the days after Julius Caesar (i.e. 44 BC) and the power consolidation of Augustus shortly thereafter. As Ronald Syme wrote, the poet Horace said only tongue in cheek that Augustus's campaign slogan was "Tota Italia" (all of Italy).

-At that time, Italians in the precise geographic area we call Italy were unified politically.

-Only Italians were Roman citizens during that period. This period lasted for over 200 years.

-Second, as the Empire was composed of nation-states welded together, the Empire recognized each nation-state as a province with borders. Not too different from the modern EU. Italy's borders were the same as today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Italy

-This situation stayed the same for roughly 500 years, and this was a long time ago. So Metternich's famous statement was invalid then, and it's invalid now.

Onto Sicily:

When the Saracens were expelled from Sicily, the attitude was not, "well, heck, if some of you that we've been fighting as a duty to God, for 500 years, want to stay, then heck, here's the welcome mat." On the contrary, it was expulsion followed by resettlement of mainland Italians.

That is why Dante formed the modern Italian language by using Tuscan mixed with Sicilian, with a smidgeon of Provencal words.

 

[Angela]

I was raised to be an Italian nationalist of the old school, and remain one today. The last thing I want to contribute to is a division of Italy along regional lines. However, facts are facts, and this is absolutely incorrect.

Moore:-But, the clines in Italy are not that different from the clines in France, Spain, Germany, Ukraine, or Sweden. Any time you have that large of territory (large by European standards), you will have a cline.

We have discussed Italian genetics here on this Board at great length. Avail yourself of the search engine to find the pertinent threads. Whether you go by uniparental markers, PCAs, Admixture Analyses, FSTs, IBD or other statistical measures, the Italian cline is different than the one in the other countries you list by an order of magnitude.

For IBD, perhaps you might want to look at Ralph and Coop again.
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001555

As to the Admixture analyses, go to any recent calculator at gedmatch that lists lots of subgroups within England, Spain, Italy. Figure out the differences in percentages of the major admixture components. There is no comparison. Between Bergamo and Southern Italy there is almost a 20 point difference in the total CHG/ENF number.

Or, look at the space that the Italian genomes take up on a PCA compared to the German genomes.
http://blog.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/novembreblogpostfig.jpg

I'm afraid that just won't fly.

As for the rest, it annoys me too at times, but consider the source of most of it. This sort of thing is the refuge either of people with an ethnic inferiority complex, or of people who aren't very broadly educated or cultivated, or of people who were fed idiotic Nordicist ideology with their mother's milk, or of people with obvious personality disorders if you mean racist anthrofora, or maybe some unfortunates suffer from all of the previous. Let them yap.

 

[moore2moore]

As to the Admixture analyses, go to any recent calculator at gedmatch that lists lots of subgroups within England, Spain, Italy. Figure out the differences in percentages of the major admixture components. There is no comparison. Between Bergamo and Southern Italy there is almost a 20 point difference in the total CHG/ENF number.

I'm afraid that just won't fly.

Thank you for your kind and wise comments above. We are certainly of the same mind.

A couple things we disagree on (which appear in the text box I quoted):

1. Geneticists have always explained to me that France is like a square, with each point showing rather extreme variability. The NW point (Bretagne, Armorica) is very Celtic-influenced. The NE point is very German/Norman influenced. The SE point (Provence, so named because the Romans joked it was a province of Italy) is very much Italian-like, with traces of Greek influence around Marseilles. And the SW point is Basque, and we know what genetic outliers they are.

Studies on France are fewer than studies on Italy. This is for two reasons: (1) French law is incredibly harsh on DNA collection, and (2) there is less interest, perhaps for the reasons I articulate above.

Forgive me if I didn't use the proper word with "cline," but I maintain places like France, for example, exhibit as much regional differentiation as in Italy. We need a few more studies, but it's hard to get such studies when every scientist is obsessed with Italy (LOL!)

2. I have yet to find a calculator in Gedmatch that accurately detects Italian heritage. I have yet to find a calculator, for that matter, that is scientifically accurate at all. This is a topic for another thread, but keep in mind that if version 1 of a calculator (which everyone loves, gets excited about, posts their results, etc.) shows a drastically different result than version 2, which the author releases a few months later (and so on), then one can't use them to base scientific conclusions.

IMHO, calculators are fun. But when purporting to do SCIENCE, and make scientific conclusions, one can't trust a thermometer that reads 20 one day, when another brand reads 55, and the next product by the same brand reads 80.

 

[Hauteville]

Dear moore2moore it's not only an issued by History Channel and anglo historians but also by italian schools that are made up by far left scholars who claim that Italy in Roman Empire was multicultural and full of slaves from Africa and Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia (but strange, no one from Gaul or Britannia uh?), that Southern Italy (they include all the regions south of Rome being part of Caliphate but in reality fact they only weakly controlled Sicily, but mostly the western part, for short time) is heavily mixed and colonized by the Arabs without expulsion but rather being tolerated because they they bring us civilization (in Magna Graecia?funny really funny), that Sardinia has a lot of Phoenician blood from Carthage, that Etruscans were Anatolians and Romans descendent from Trojan exiles etc etc. What a joke. Nothing new about your post, just only disgust judging at how many garbage against Italy. Anyway the lack of Campanian samples shocking me since it's a very important region and with an important metropolis like Naples. Anyway regarding other samples, luckily you can find samples used by Eurogenes and derived from Behar and Hellenthal about Abruzzo (samples from Chieti) and Calabria (samples from Crotone). The precedent study about Italian structure made by De Gaetano was partially incorrent in my opinion, because it used as well samples of mixed peoples from many regions.

 

[Danelaw]

I agree. The lame attempt to explain positions of PCA plots with historical conquests is typical of American half breeds confused about their own identity, who think that it is cool to be as mixed and colorful as them. Now we have mesolitich and neolitich samples from Anatolia and the Caucasus which can easily explain the genetic landscape of Italy, without bringing in Moors, Jews and Levantine Slaves. I feel bad for PC lunatics from the new world.

 

[Sile]

Thank you for your kind and wise comments above. We are certainly of the same mind.

A couple things we disagree on (which appear in the text box I quoted):

1. Geneticists have always explained to me that France is like a square, with each point showing rather extreme variability. The NW point (Bretagne, Armorica) is very Celtic-influenced. The NE point is very German/Norman influenced. The SE point (Provence, so named because the Romans joked it was a province of Italy) is very much Italian-like, with traces of Greek influence around Marseilles. And the SW point is Basque, and we know what genetic outliers they are.

Studies on France are fewer than studies on Italy. This is for two reasons: (1) French law is incredibly harsh on DNA collection, and (2) there is less interest, perhaps for the reasons I articulate above.

Forgive me if I didn't use the proper word with "cline," but I maintain places like France, for example, exhibit as much regional differentiation as in Italy. We need a few more studies, but it's hard to get such studies when every scientist is obsessed with Italy (LOL!)

2. I have yet to find a calculator in Gedmatch that accurately detects Italian heritage. I have yet to find a calculator, for that matter, that is scientifically accurate at all. This is a topic for another thread, but keep in mind that if version 1 of a calculator (which everyone loves, gets excited about, posts their results, etc.) shows a drastically different result than version 2, which the author releases a few months later (and so on), then one can't use them to base scientific conclusions.

IMHO, calculators are fun. But when purporting to do SCIENCE, and make scientific conclusions, one can't trust a thermometer that reads 20 one day, when another brand reads 55, and the next product by the same brand reads 80.

I do not know why we are discussing this paper. the paper in limited to italians from non-adriatic sea side areas. no samples came from the eastern side of italy. they seem to link these supplied samples with western italians of etruscans, romans, ligures, southerners ..............they did include the main etruscan town of romagna area

 

[Angela]

Thank you for your kind and wise comments above. We are certainly of the same mind.

A couple things we disagree on (which appear in the text box I quoted):

1. Geneticists have always explained to me that France is like a square, with each point showing rather extreme variability. The NW point (Bretagne, Armorica) is very Celtic-influenced. The NE point is very German/Norman influenced. The SE point (Provence, so named because the Romans joked it was a province of Italy) is very much Italian-like, with traces of Greek influence around Marseilles. And the SW point is Basque, and we know what genetic outliers they are.

Studies on France are fewer than studies on Italy. This is for two reasons: (1) French law is incredibly harsh on DNA collection, and (2) there is less interest, perhaps for the reasons I articulate above.

Forgive me if I didn't use the proper word with "cline," but I maintain places like France, for example, exhibit as much regional differentiation as in Italy. We need a few more studies, but it's hard to get such studies when every scientist is obsessed with Italy (LOL!)

2. I have yet to find a calculator in Gedmatch that accurately detects Italian heritage. I have yet to find a calculator, for that matter, that is scientifically accurate at all. This is a topic for another thread, but keep in mind that if version 1 of a calculator (which everyone loves, gets excited about, posts their results, etc.) shows a drastically different result than version 2, which the author releases a few months later (and so on), then one can't use them to base scientific conclusions.

IMHO, calculators are fun. But when purporting to do SCIENCE, and make scientific conclusions, one can't trust a thermometer that reads 20 one day, when another brand reads 55, and the next product by the same brand reads 80.

It's indeed true that there are differences in France in terms of migration patterns and therefore some differences in genetic make up. The same is true in Germany. The whole POBI study (People of the British Isles) was created to find those differences in Britain. Did they find any? Yes, they did. However, as the authors of the POBI study pointed out, they had to go to a very fine level of resolution to find any differences.

It's not that there isn't population structure in other European countries; it's just that the one in Italy is much more pronounced. Wishing it away is dishonest and it isn't going to work anyway. The data is there. Denying it just makes people look foolish. There's just absolutely no question about it.

Let's take, for example, the new analyses that are bring done using the ancient CHG genome. Eurogenes hasn't deigned to include Sicilians and Southern Italians in his new calculator, but the poster "Chad" has included them.

You can find the results here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...D13gGj9enAtTA/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=232516320

Now, I'm not saying that the percentages are exact. I take all such percentages from amateur calculators with a large grain of salt. However, that's not the point. It's the relationships which are revealed which are the issue.

I made a comparison between the "French" results and the "French South" results, the latter of which are from far southwestern France, with the "French" results coming from eastern France. I added up the "southern" components, i.e. Anatolian Farmer, Caucasus Hunter/Gatherer, and S.W. Asian for both groups. The difference between the two French groups was around 3-4 points.

I then did the same thing for the Bergamo samples versus the south Italian and Sicilian samples. The difference was from 10-12 points. You don't think that's a more significant difference? Do the arithmetic yourself and you'll see what I mean.

Any analysis which contains samples from the three major Italian groupings and samples from more than one region in other countries will give the same results. I've done the analyses. I'm not just guessing.

I also disagree with your comment that no calculator reflects Italian heritage, or at least, if I understand your point, I think I disagree. I've run every single gedmatch calculator on my genome. I've also run DIY versions where they're available. My results always show me as Northern Italian/Tuscan in first and second place, although the FST fits might differ. In the MDLP latest calculator, where he has 4 northern Italian reference samples as well as a Tuscan sample, those are my first five results. I'd say that's pretty good.

I know that Southern Italians/Sicilians, in addition to coming out as what they are, sometimes get Ashkenazi as one of their lesser results. That happened to my husband too. Now, whether that's just coincidence because the Ashkenazim have ancient Near Eastern ancestry plus central European and eastern European ancestry, or whether there's something to the idea that the Ashkenazim partly descend from Italians I don't know, although I suspect it's more the former.

At any rate, once you look at IBD segments, it's absolutely crystal clear that Ashkenazim and southern Italians /Sicilians haven't shared any ancestry in at least the last 500-600 years. No Ashkenazim show up as "genetic relatives" of Sicilians or Southern Italians at 23andme.

For that matter, up until the last few decades, southern Italians and northern Italians haven't exchanged genetic material for the last 500 years either. I've been on 23andme from the very first. Most of my matches* (few of them because the number of people from my area who have tested are very few) are from northwestern Italy and Toscana, a few from Lombardia. I even have a few of Scandinavian descent, and Irish descent. I have yet to get a close match with someone of totally southern Italian descent.

While the "base" if you want to call it that, EEF with some additional WHG, in my opinion, is the same, subsequent migrations coming from different directions affected different parts of Italy. Political separations and a very mountainous terrain resulted in a certain amount of drift. One set of migrations wasn't any better than any other, one group of Italians isn't any better than any other, and it doesn't mean that we're not all Italians.

Anyway, that's how I see it.

Ed,* I'm referring to matches at the default level or above. I think matches below that may be IBS instead.

 

[moore2moore]

We're pretty much on the same page, although not entirely.

We are making the same point with respect to calculators and Italians, just saying it in different ways.

Many of the "calculators" use Tuscans as the baseline for Italians, or, alternatively, the Tuscan samples are the largest in their databases. (This is similar to how, many calculators use people from Utah of Northern & Western European ancestry as a proxy and the biggest baseline for what people think of as a generic north/west European.)

Just like Utahans, who tend more often than not to be LDS, with an entirely different migration history than the rest of the country (more British, more Scandinavian, significantly less Irish) are not the perfect baseline for all Americans of western European heritage -- As you noted, Tuscans aren't always the best proxy for Southern Italians.

This causes Southern Italians, who have a right to "Italianness" as much as anyone else, to fall under other categories, with false positives and false negatives since they don't always match Tuscans closely. GIGO. So, we're saying the same thing on that point.

As for the other countries, I don't believe or pretend that the clines are as pronounced as Italy, a long country with very isolated regions. But they do exist in other nations, even if they are not as focused on. And since the other countries haven't been picked apart by studies, it is entirely possible that additional genetic differences will be discovered over time.