At least not fully. I won't know unless and until I do one of those personal DNA tests. While my curiosity is piqued, I'm not sure I'm ready to plunk down $99 for one of those tests. My niece is doing a family genealogy but she can't seem to get further back than my maternal and paternal great grandparents, who came from small villages in Italy and Sicily. Need I say anything about record-keeping in small Italian and Sicilian villages? Especially after "Father Guido" died and the baptismal records from the town church were lost.
My paternal grandfather who was Sicilian (allegedly, at this point
), had bright blue eyes. My father said he had platinum blond hair as a boy. My paternal grandmother had blonde hair. The long and short of it is that it's more common in my family to be fair complexioned and light haired. Sicily and southern Italy were invaded and settled by the Norse, among others of course. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy was overrun by Germanics. I have always had a gut feeling we are not Mediterranean, but Germanic.
What prompted this to resurface was a conversation I had at the health store with the manager. I was asking about supplements for controlling my blood sugar, Metabolic Syndrome and insulin resistance. We talked for a while. He explained some migration history and the biology of it to me, and when I said my background is Italian and Sicilian, he said "no it's not, you're northern European, probably Germanic". I was gobsmacked, but I said I always had a gut feeling. Maybe that's why even as a kid Thor was my hero.
My paternal grandfather who was Sicilian (allegedly, at this point
), had bright blue eyes. My father said he had platinum blond hair as a boy. My paternal grandmother had blonde hair. The long and short of it is that it's more common in my family to be fair complexioned and light haired. Sicily and southern Italy were invaded and settled by the Norse, among others of course. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy was overrun by Germanics. I have always had a gut feeling we are not Mediterranean, but Germanic.What prompted this to resurface was a conversation I had at the health store with the manager. I was asking about supplements for controlling my blood sugar, Metabolic Syndrome and insulin resistance. We talked for a while. He explained some migration history and the biology of it to me, and when I said my background is Italian and Sicilian, he said "no it's not, you're northern European, probably Germanic". I was gobsmacked, but I said I always had a gut feeling. Maybe that's why even as a kid Thor was my hero.