Hail Sicilia!!!!!

Hate it when those dumb nordists keep trashing my Island with their Saracen Invasion Bull crap!

The Molecule Hunt
Archaeology and the Search for Ancient DNA
By Martin Jones
Chairman of the International Ancient
Biomolecules Initiative and Professor of Archaeology
at Cambridge University
Arcade Press
2001
Page 156

"Throughout history, the island of Sicily has been one of the MAJOR crossroads of the Mediterranean. Sure enough, a survey of ninety unrelated islanders produced a frequency of the characteristic Sub-Saharan mutation at just over 4%. This is about a third of the frequency at which the mutation is found among the only Arab data available, from Palestinian Arabs studied in Israel. There are many episodes in the past when this gene flow could have LINKED the central Mediterranean ultimately with Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Mediaeval period of Islamic Sicily is an obvious contender. Indeed, the untested assumption of when AFRICAN haplotypes turn up in modern European populations is that they relate to a recent episode of immigration. However, with so little ancient human DNA study, placing the flow within a time frame remains a matter of conjecture. What the ancient Nubian mutations do indicate is that a SUBSTANTIAL flow of genes was occuring between the south and the north of the Sahara ata time when the Classical civilizations of the Mediterranean were flourishing."

Jones is referring to this old study from 1989:

Mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms in Italy. III. Population data from Sicily: a possible quantitation of maternal African ancestry

Semino et al. (1989)

Am J Hum Genet

mtDNA polymorphisms were studied in a sample of 90 individuals of the Sicilian population using six restriction enzymes: HpaI, BamHI, HaeII, MspI, AvaII and HincII. ... Of particular interest is that the HpaI-3/AvaII-3 complex, which is unique to groups of African ancestry, was found in Sicily at a frequency of 4.4%. For the first time an estimate of the amount of gene flow from Blacks to the Sicilian gene pool could be obtained.

Link

Which was refuted by this study from 2001:

Mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis in Sicily

Vona et al. (2001)

Am J Hum Biol

In work carried out with restriction enzymes on mtDNA in a sample of Sicilians, Semino et al. (1989) indicated the presence (4.4%) of the African complex HpaI-3/AvaII-3 (40% in Senegal and in the Bantu of South Africa). The authors hypothesized a migration of genes from Africa to Sicily, estimated at about 10%, which was introduced into the Sicilian gene pool by Black slaves brought by the Phoenicians and the Romans and/or by Arab migrations. Results at the mtDNA sequencing level, however, show no Black African influence in the Sicilian population.

Link

The figure for sub-Saharan admixture quoted on the 'Sicilian Origins' page is the most up to date (from a 2003 study) and accurate (based on a sample of 465 rather than under 100).

Thought Writes:

Of course we know that EAST African genes such as E3b are common in many parts of Europe.

The type of E3b found in Sicilians is different than the one found in East Africans and they are both different from E3a which is the main type found in Sub-Saharan Negroids.