"

It's unfortunate that the history of Sicily here at Wiki is the sole province of this one individual, ""Racial Reality,"" who is well-known amongst forum posters as being very biased against any research that shows admixture.  He feels he has the right to discredit all studies he disagrees with, and that everyone should accept his theories as absolute fact.  I could just as easily creat a website presenting an opposite view and discrediting studies that Racial Reality likes.  But I am not that dishonest.  My point was to present the other side of the story, while leaving Racial Reality's also valid side there as well; in this way, the reader can draw his or her own conclusions. But the way the article is now is extremely one-sided.

Blood group studies from the 1970's are not incorrect. This method has fallen out of fashion merely because it is less sensitive than the newer DNA method we have access to.  This fact doesn't discredit older studies that use blood groups, since the blood groups and blood proteins used are specific to certain populations.  Since the decoding of the human genome, we have access to more sensitive methods of determing admixture.  

An example of how blood groups studies are valid is the Duffy null marker. The Duffy blood-group types have been known for many decades, as has their usefulness in identifying continent of ancestry. But it has been only within the past decade that we have known that a person's Duffy blood-group type is encoded on the long arm of his/her chromosome #1, about 23.2 centimorgans out from the chromosome's centromere. 

In general, you can measure the end-result of a person's genetic makeup by serological analysis (blood group tests), or you can measure the actual genetic makeup itself in the DNA. The latter is more precise since some proteins are produced (or not) only in homozygotes and so are invisible to serological analysis but visible in the DNA. If anything, serological analysis will understimate true admixture. 

The Ghiani study specifically states that it shows significant admixture.  Anyone can see this when reading the abstract. However, what they mean by ""significant"" is ""statistically significant"", not that a large portion of Sicilians' DNA is African. Five percent or more is usually considered statistically significant.

The Calo study presents support for the east-west division in Sicily, and shows relatedness between Sicilians and Egyptians.  Egyptians were imported to Sicily during the Saracen period as farmers, so the connection between Sicilians and Egyptians is not spurious. The study's use of perfectly valid blood group and mtDNA studies which show sub-Saharan admixture in Sicily were merely to show that other studies found ""African"" admixture there, regardless of whether it was sub-Saharan or North African.  There are other studies which lump the two together. The whole point was to show a relationship with the (diverse) peoples of the continent of Africa.

The Semino study from 1989 which found 4 sub-Saharan haplotypes out of a population of 91 diverse Sicilians is not ""problematic,"" as Racial Reality would have us believe, but is a perfectly valid mtDNA study using restriction enzymes, a method still widely used today, since it is cost-effective and accurate.  RFLP's cut the DNA at specified locations, and ""indels"" (insertion and deletions polymorphisms) are very easy to spot in this way. There are other studies that have found less (or in one case, no) sub-Saharan material in the Sicilian gene pool.  This is normal, since all samples are different, and because of this, all tests will yield different results.  One certainly can't ""refute"" or ""overrule"" the other.  The 2001 Vona study (finding no sub-Saharan genes in Sicilians) that referenced the 1989 Semino study did so for comparison purposes only.  Furthermore, it tested only 49 Siclians from the single villige of Alia.  No reliable conclusions can be reached for the Sicilian population as a whole from such a narrow sample.  Dr. Ornella Semino, a former colleage of mine, found it both amusing and a bit disturbing when I mentioned to here that certain non-professional forum posters considered her study ""outdated"" or ""overruled"" or ""refuted""  all absolute drivel!

Lastly, the person who wrote this...

""Lastly, talk of races is all hogwash in any event...""

...should be aware that the person made the steward of all things Sicilian, the above-mentioned Racial Reality, is a proponent of the existence of races...just look at his handle.

I am a retired geneticist, and I do believe I have something valuable to contribute.  Incidentally, I am of partial Sicilian ancestry, and am proud of all who contributed to that great island's melting-pot population.  I hope at least some of what I've said will be taken to he