Who, all things considered, should be considered the closest foreign "kin" of southern Italians?

[Sikeliot]

Yes, they are in order.

Culturally and historically is nonsense separate the Greek Islands from the rest of Greece that's the reason I didn't voted. There's no single reasonable choice.

Because genetics is a factor in the question is why it is separated.

[JMack]

Ashkenazi Jews.
Mainland Greeks as in Peloponnese Greeks are a close match too.
Cretins share close genetic proximity to Sicilians.
Sephardi Jews are really shifted closer to Greek Cypriots and only have minor overlap with Sicilians.

Do you think Ashkenazis are more similar CULTURALLY and historically to S. Italians than Greeks and Iberians? Really?

[JMack]

Because genetics is a factor in the question is why it is separated.

But doesn't make sense culturally to separate them. No Cretan wakes up in the morning thinking he is different from mainlanders.

If you wanted a reasonable response you should include an option with whole Greece. Even because some islands are different genetically from places like Puglia and Campania.

No one in the real world base their identities in genetics.

[Sikeliot]

Do you think Ashkenazis are more similar CULTURALLY and historically to S. Italians than Greeks and Iberians? Really?

Not sure, but Iberians are genetically very far from southern Italians (the furthest from them on the list) so I am unsure why you voted it.

[Sikeliot]

Yes, they are in order.

Culturally and historically is nonsense separate the Greek Islands from the rest of Greece that's the reason I didn't voted. There's no single reasonable choice.

I did combine Greece into one option if you want me to change your vote let me know. Though I REALLY think Epirotes, Macedonians, Thessalians (Greek speaking Arvanites, Slavs, and Vlachs mixed with Pontic Greek, really) have little to nothing to do with southern Italians at all.

My thought to answer my question is that no one answer is a perfect fit. I'd say:

Phenotype: Levant and Jewish
Genetics: Jewish
Historically: Greece
Culturally: Iberia and Greece
Linguistically: Iberia

[Yehiel]

Greeks.

[Yehiel]

I broke it down this way
culture - Greeks
phenotype - Jews
genotype - Greeks, tricky but Southern Italians have more Greek admixture than Jewish admixture.
history - Greeks

[MysteriousWays]

Ordering: Greece, Spain/Portugal, Christian Levantines, Jews (if it was purely Ashkenazi, I'd possibly put them in 3rd ahead of Christian Levantines, but even then I doubt it). In a cultural/historical sense, with the important exception of conversos, Sicilians and Jews (both Ashkenazi/Sephardic) have very little to do with each other.

While they plot closely to each other genetically, without knowing the individual components of members of each group extremely well, I cannot say whether they are related to each other in a causal or "true" sense or not. With more ancient samples and time to analyze them, we will get a fuller answer to the genetic question. I'd put it as TBD in the meantime...My gut sense is that Ashkenazi Jews and Sicilians are not directly related to one another in a major way, but more samples of Sicilians and/or early Ashkenazim if possible to find would be helpful to answer this.

[Sikeliot]

I broke it down this way
culture - Greeks
phenotype - Jews
genotype - Greeks, tricky but Southern Italians have more Greek admixture than Jewish admixture.
history - Greeks

Culturally it is split between Greek and Iberian. Surely some regions are still very close to Greece and Latinization was only surface level (Calabria, Apulia, part of Sicily) while other parts of Sicily and places like Campania are more Latinized culturally.

Otherwise I agree but I would say that the southerners are closer genetically to some Jewish groups and only some Greek groups -- there is little in common genetically to Epirotes, Thessalians etc.

Overall Greece makes most sense as a choice to me, but I do not think this applies to all parts of Greece as I think some regions are very distinctly Balkan and are not the "type" of Greek we mean when we make the comparison.

[Yehiel]

Ordering: Greece, Spain/Portugal, Christian Levantines, Jews (if it was purely Ashkenazi, I'd possibly put them in 3rd ahead of Christian Levantines, but even then I doubt it). In a cultural/historical sense, with the important exception of conversos, Sicilians and Jews (both Ashkenazi/Sephardic) have very little to do with each other.

While they plot closely to each other genetically, without knowing the individual components of members of each group extremely well, I cannot say whether they are related to each other in a causal or "true" sense or not. With more ancient samples and time to analyze them, we will get a fully answer to the genetic question. I'd put it as TBD in the meantime...My gut sense is that Ashkenazi Jews and Sicilians are not directly related to one another in a major way, but more samples of Sicilians and/or early Ashkenazim if possible to find would be helpful to answer this.

I think its definitely because European Jews and Sicilians just have similar levantine input, not that they are actually related.