Sicilians; Phenotypical diversity and resemblance to other groups.

[Ugo Tognazzi]

some Sicilian Authors

Luigi Pirandello,


Andrea Camilleri


Leonardo Sciascia


Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (aristocratic family)


Gesualdo Bufalino


Vitaliano Brancati


Giovanni Verga


Luigi Capuana


Salvatore Quasimodo


Elio Vittorini




Mainly Mediterranean/Atlanto Med, with some Mediterranoid/Berid & Alpino Dinaric

The selection looks primarily Western Mediterranean. Possibly Vittorini (the last one) could fit Greece (he was borne in Syracuse)

None share Levantine & North African looks. Which maybe are found in other sections of the Sicilian Population

[Sikeliot]

The people you provided almost look somewhat southern French.

Really though they are a diverse population because you have people like this;





People like this;



and then like this;

even some with light coloring like a Northern European;




So it probably would be tough to definitively say they look closest to group X or group Y.

[StonyArabia]

Turks never made it to Sicily. But Berbers did. Sicilians have some Berber admix but it amounts almost to nothing. Because the Berbers only ruled Sicily for 200 years. There is some Levantine influence due to Carthage, but the Anatolian element came from the neolithic. Anatolians are subset of Europeans originally before the Turkic migration there. Yes true Turkics were Mongoloid of Siberian/Central Asian origins.

[Foxy]

Obviously they look closer to Greeks, due to their greek ancestry.

They're essentially Greek and Italic first, then with smaller amounts of Phoenician, Norman, Northern Italian, and North African depending on the part of the island.

Sicilians, as a whole, are a mix of Sicules (Italics), Greeks and Sicans, migrated from Iberia. Some of them have Northern African admixture and a small part also Norman. There is not only one look, but the general Sicilian remembers me Greeks, at least for the form of their eyes...



You know, the form of the eyes, they have the angles turned down... But not always.

[Sikeliot]

Sicilians, as a whole, are a mix of Sicules (Italics), Greeks and Sicans, migrated from Iberia. Some of them have Northern African admixture and a small part also Norman. There is not only one look, but the general Sicilian remembers me Greeks, at least for the form of their eyes...



You know, the form of the eyes, they have the angles turned down... But not always.

You forgot the Elymians, who came from Anatolia. It was essentially Italics in the east, Elymians in the west, and Sicanians in the center and then the Phoenicians and Carthaginians took the west, the Greeks took the east. And then when the Byzantine Empire took the island, Greeks settled all over and with the Normans, northern Italians did too. Unlike what was said above, Turks never were there, but I suspect also a significant portion of the island's ancestry comes from Neolithic spread, which would have predated the groups listed above.

I think the people in this picture are kind of the typical/average look but I'm not Sicilian so I wouldn't know. In this pic the woman in the very center is American but the rest are from there.

[Foxy]

You forgot the Elymians, who came from Anatolia. It was essentially Italics in the east, Elymians in the west, and Sicanians in the center and then the Phoenicians and Carthaginians took the west, the Greeks took the east. And then when the Byzantine Empire took the island, Greeks settled all over and with the Normans, northern Italians did too. Unlike what was said above, Turks never were there, but I suspect also a significant portion of the island's ancestry comes from Neolithic spread, which would have predated the groups listed above.

I think the people in this picture are kind of the typical/average look but I'm not Sicilian so I wouldn't know. In this pic the woman in the very center is American but the rest are from there.

Alive I know only two Sicilian girls. The first for me looks half Arabic, although depigmented. What makes me thin of an Arab is the form of the eyes (similar to that that i posted above) and the colour of the skin that is not as fair as that of most other Italians from where I live (central Italy). I would not be surprise that abroad she would be confused for Arabic. The other one is more or less similar, but her nose is more pointed than potetoe. Same form of the eyes, skin colour and eyes and hair colour, but the nose gives her a more European look. Anyway hair and eyes colour are not enough to look from Middle East. The most similar girl who looks northern African that I now is from Puglia. She has brown hair and eyes but olive skin and the form of her nose and the bone structure (gracile) makes her pass for a depigmented maghrebin (maybe from Tunisia...).

Anyway this look is minoritarian in Southern Italy, very rare in central Italy and pretty impossible to find in the North, except in case of immigration from the deep South, especially Sicily, Calabria and in less misure from Puglia.
I dunno if it has some connection with the Greek colonization or is only the result of the low latitude in which these peoples live. I go for the second, becouse Northern Greeks are fairer too. On the other hand you can't exclude the fact that Sicily and Calabria were full of Greek cities.

[Sikeliot]

Some Greeks actually have a Slavic type look, which I have never seen in Sicilians or Calabrese, but many of them do look alike, you're right.

[Turkophagos]

Some Greeks actually have a Slavic type look, which I have never seen in Sicilians or Calabrese...

Elaborate.

[Sikeliot]

Elaborate.

I know a girl from Ioannina and she looks like she could be Ukrainian. Granted these types are obviously a minority, nonetheless.

[Sikeliot]

Adding famous people to the thread;

Lady Gaga


Al Pacino


Liza Minnelli


Frank Zappa


Susan Sarandon