Two Mediterranean islands. A 35.4-point gap in their largest ancestry component.

The Sicilian and Sardinian references both have Anatolian Neolithic Farmer ancestry as their largest component, but the model assigns 46.6% to the Sicilian reference and 82.0% to the Sardinian reference.

The rest of the picture differs too. For Sicilians, Western Steppe Herder ancestry reaches 25.2%, followed by Levantine Neolithic Farmer ancestry at 16.9%. For Sardinians, Western Hunter-Gatherer ancestry is 12.9%, while Western Steppe Herder ancestry is just 3.9%. These are the three largest components for each reference, rather than complete breakdowns.

Modern population comparisons tell another part of the story. Among the distinct regional matches shown here, the Sicilian reference is very close to Campanians from Naples (2.126) and Calabrese from Reggio Calabria (2.325). The Sardinian reference is closer to Corsicans (7.466) and Lombards from Brescia (8.152) than to the Sicilian reference itself (10.621).

These results describe population averages using the same ancestry model. Genetic distance measures similarity in the comparison model; it is not a percentage of shared DNA, and individual family histories can differ.

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