Malta and Tunisia face each other across the Mediterranean—but their closest genetic matches tell different stories.

The Maltese reference is modeled as 46.6% Anatolian Neolithic Farmer, 25.9% Western Steppe Herder and 15.9% Levantine Neolithic Farmer, plus 7.0% Zagros Neolithic Farmer, 3.2% Iberomaurusian, 0.8% West African and 0.6% Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer.

Tunisian Arab has 26.6% Levantine Neolithic Farmer, 25.7% Anatolian Neolithic Farmer and 22.7% Iberomaurusian, followed by 9.5% Western Steppe Herder, 8.2% West African, 4.3% Zagros Neolithic Farmer, 1.7% Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer and 1.3% Nilotic.

Both share ancient farmer-related layers, but Maltese has more modeled Anatolian farmer and steppe ancestry. Tunisian Arab has a larger Iberomaurusian-related component, associated with prehistoric North Africa. These ancient model labels are not percentages of modern nationalities.

Maltese's nearest match is Italian Pantelleria (1.616), followed by western Sicily (1.687), Trapani (1.702) and Ashkenazi Jew Romania (1.731), all very close. Other Sicilian and Mediterranean Jewish references follow. The national-flag cards select Pantelleria and the Romanian Ashkenazi reference, alongside Tunisian Arab.

Tunisian Arab is nearest to Tunisian Arab Tunis (1.183, extremely close). Algerian Arab (1.269), Tunisia's Sened Berber reference (1.626), Moroccan Arab Oujda (2.000) and Libyan Arab Tripoli (2.020) are very close. Tunis and Sened share Tunisia's flag, so the cards select Algerian Arab and Oujda, alongside Maltese.

The mutual distance is 15.171, rated somewhat distant. Regional Tunisian references vary: Sfax is closer to Maltese at 9.391. That doesn't replace the exact Tunisian Arab reference used here. Both target averages have 8 samples; some nearby references have only 1–3. Rankings depend on reference coverage, and distance is not a percentage of shared DNA.

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