Blond, light brown and redhaired Southern Italians

[Anthropologique]

The ancient romans/greeks described them as mostly blond/ginger.

The Gauls were known to have used lye and other materials to turn their hair blond. A fiercer look?

[Fra Baldracco]

So are these blondes from Southern Italy true Italians?

they surely are,but europe has been populated by internal migrations from thousands years so the crowds of Italy are deeply mixed.

[Sikeliot]

A blonde southern Italian is likely genetically identical to any other southern Italian.

[AR89]

A blonde southern Italian is likely genetically identical to any other southern Italian.

I didn't understand your reply, does this mean that a blonde southern italian is closer to a dark southern italian than to a blonde northern italian?

From my experience I can say that there aren't much blonde neither in northern Italy nor in southern Italy, of course the percentage is bigger in northern Italy, but they still are a minority (12% in Norther Italy and 6% in southern Italy, the latter percentage does not consider reddish-brown shades).

Italy is a mix of various races, which are the same in every region, what change is just the composition of them.

[Sikeliot]

I didn't understand your reply, does this mean that a blonde southern italian is closer to a dark southern italian than to a blonde northern italian?

What I mean is, from a genetic point of view (i.e. on PCA plots and autosomal analyses), a blonde southern Italian who could pass for German and a darker southern Italian who looks like a Greek will essentially cluster nearer to one another than the blonde southern Italian will cluster with a blonde northern Italian or Austrian who may look more similar.

[AR89]

What I mean is, from a genetic point of view (i.e. on PCA plots and autosomal analyses), a blonde southern Italian who could pass for German and a darker southern Italian who looks like a Greek will essentially cluster nearer to one another than the blonde southern Italian will cluster with a blonde northern Italian or Austrian who may look more similar.

And why this?

[Sikeliot]

And why this?

I've known people from anthropology sites who used 23andme and regardless of physical appearance they always cluster with others of their respective ethnicity.

[AR89]

This can be true for some but utterly false for others, Southern Italy is really divided into many small villages which didn't have really much contacts (or not contacts at all) for centuries. In small villages it is still more common to marry people of the same village, so I would not be surprised if they cluster nearer to someone of a northern region rather to someone or a near village.

[Fra Baldracco]

This can be true for some but utterly false for others, Southern Italy is really divided into many small villages which didn't have really much contacts (or not contacts at all) for centuries. In small villages it is still more common to marry people of the same village, so I would not be surprised if they cluster nearer to someone of a northern region rather to someone or a near village.

this WAS true a decade ago,now we have romanians all over the place and also in small villages they work as shepherd or bricklayer and also may romanian women who work as some kind of nurse with the old people in their houses.

[BanjaLuka]

this WAS true a decade ago,now we have romanians all over the place and also in small villages they work as shepherd or bricklayer and also may romanian women who work as some kind of nurse with the old people in their houses.

That lack of exogamy for such a long time must have had some bad side effect, for example the increase of hereditaty genetic disorders and similar, as has happened in Finland, where due to vast territory and lack of population people were thinking that it is safe to marry with someone 500 km away while it would later prove that they are related (through church register books) and kids would inherit bad hereditary diseases that in the end killed their common ancestor...There was some BBC documentary about it ...