Who are Sardinians closest to genetically?

[Hadouken]

dont know but 1 thing is for sure :

they are very good looking people (among one of the best looking) and seem to have beautiful lands , yummy food and nice culture

never been there but i go buy things i have seen on the interwebz

[Mehmet]

Sardinians are the most West Eurasian people of Europe: they are significantly less shifted towards East Eurasia than the bulk of Europeans. But they still carry the same ancestry as Europeans and the inherent East Eurasian ancestry (Ancient North Eurasian), that's why they are European and they are most similar to other Europeans while still being apart and unique. The most similar modern populations to them are probably in the Italian peninsula and Iberia (+ Southernmost France) but the gap is still big.

Sardinians are also slightly African-admixed through neighboring North Africa.

You mean they are 'lost Turks'?

[Gaston]

So would they be close to Sephardic? I believe they are Mediterranean and North African admixed.

No, they have nothing to do with European Jews (not directly) who are a recently admixed population with high West Asian admixture.

They are basically isolated descendants of one of the earliest waves of migration that populated the Mediterranean, as are Berbers. This is why both are so high in the "Mediterranean" component genetically, and other Southern Europeans, North Africans, and Middle Easterners are partially descended from a Sardinian-like people that were one of the earliest in the area.

Berbers, in particular, would be similar to Sardinians if they did not have the recent influxes from SW Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sardinians have little to no mainland Italian ancestry.

Daedal101's bullshit theory. Berbers share as much ancestry with Yemenite Jews as with Sardinians. It makes sense because Berbers are not Europeans by any mean and they speak an Afroasiatic language since their genesis (shared with Yemenite Jews). And their African ancestry is probably older than any modern European group.
All in all, they are definitely not long lost cousins of Sardinians as so many people like to think.


A few precisions: the expression "Sardinian-like" has been used in a European context to mean highly mediterranean-admixed, especially Neolithic people who preceded North European-admixed people in all Southern Europe. The expression may confuse some people and make them think Sardinians are the ancestors of people in Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, it's not at all what it means. It's just the Mediterranean component often peaks in Sardinians (sometimes in Mozabites too). Sardinians themselves have been influenced (slightly) by later invasion during the Bronze age, that's why Otzi in the Alps was more Southern and less Northern European than Sardinians.
Finally on Sardinians, their minor African ancestry implies significant recent North African ancestry (I've read somewhere up to 5-6%).

You mean they are 'lost Turks'?

No, it's a lot older than Turkic migrations and the East Eurasian ancestry of Europeans is not East Asian but a distant "Ancient North Asian" cousin. But some Northern Europeans are much more East Eurasian (through Ancient North Asian ancestry + in some cases more recent Siberian) than a lot of Turks from Turkey if you want.