I gave my parents two kits for Christmas a few years back. Did one myself as well. All Italians show ancestry from all around the Mediterranean. Both my parents had a lot of Middle Eastern blood. From my mom's side I got the 0.20% from Finland. Where the hell did that come from? According to the supplied info that was from about 1400. Some guy travelling through Italy must have found my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandmother a hottie. Everything else is typical Ginny.
Thanks Michael. It was great making contact with you. In case you are interested, here is some info on your Peucetian heritage.
You may have noticed that you have ethnicity which
ancestry.com identifies as “Greece and the Balkans”. This is a little different than your other ethnicities in that there are no specific “Greek” ancestors. Nobody in our family tree has a Greek name or lived in Greece or the Balkans. Rather, it might be more correct to say that you are Peucetian rather than Italian and Greek. This derives from the fact that your ancestors on your mother's side are from an area in Italy referred to by the Romans as Magna Graecia (Latin for “Great Greece”) which was densely inhabited by Greeks.
Specifically, as you may have been told, your ancestors are from Giovinazzo, Bari, Puglia, Italy. Giovinazzo (“Scevenazzo” in Barese, called “Natolium” by the Romans, “Juvenantium” during the middle ages, and originally referred to as “Jovis Natio” by the Greeks) which is an ancient village/fortress in southeast Italy on the coast of the Adriatic Sea where your ancestors (mostly fishermen, sailors and merchants) lived for millenium and which, for most of history, was culturally, linguistically (and even genetically) part of Greece and the Balkans. Greek legend has it that the village was established by the mythical hero Perseus, son of Jupiter, hence the name Jovis Natio. The town is part of the Terra di Bari (Bari metropolitan area) which is in the central part of Apulia or “Puglia” the southeast Italian coastal region. The language that your Apulian ancestors spoke (and in many cases still do!) is not Italian, but Barese, a distinctive Bari dialect.
The address in Giovinazzo where your great grandfather, Angelo Lasorsa I (a shared ancestor) lived and then died in 1897 and where your ancestors have lived for centuries before him is:
It is right near the water in "Cathedral Square". Thebuilding, built from the white stone of Puglia, dates back to the 1600's, and is called "Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace or Ducal Palace) which is adjacent to the old Cathedral dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, built in the Norman period 1150-1180. In this picture, it is the building on the right before the Cathedral:
The entrance archway opens up into a center courtyard (please see open square area on map) and the individual living units are accessed via their own doorway from the courtyard. This area of Giovinazzo is called "Centro Storico" meaning the “historic center” and is the oldest section of Giovinazzo. Perhaps someday (when travel is less fraught) you can visit.
The Cathedral is the home of Giovinazzo's Patron Saint La Madonna Maria SS. Di Corsignano:
What is currently the site of our ancestral home in Giovinazzo was absorbed into the Roman Republic during the First Punic War around 250 BC. The old "Peucete Netium" fortress was on the site previously (manned by earlier ancestors).
One of the ancient entrances to Giovinazzo, which still stands today, is called the Arco Traiano (Arch of Trajan) which was ordered built by Emperor Trajan in the 14th century to reinforce the defensive walls (the "U Tamurre"). It has two ogival arches on foundations incorporating four columns which were originally milestones of the "Via Traiana" an ancient road from Rome to Brindisi during Roman times in the second century:
The Via Traiana was one of two great Roman roads that crossed the Peucetia: one branch the "Via Appia" started further north. Your road, the longer "Via Traiana" branched off from the base at Ofanto and from Canosa passed through Ruvo, Bitonto and Natium (now Giovinazzo) and then continued through Bari, Torre Ripagnola, Egnatia and Ostuni.
Your "Greek" heritage goes back to classical antiquity, the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 6th century AD, centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known as the Greco-Roman world. During this period, Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout much of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. Your ancestor's home, Jovis Natio, was a port of strategic importance as the destination of Greek cargo ships in ancient times and a link to settlements further inland.
The colonization of Magna Graecia had already begun by the time of the Trojan War and lasted for several centuries. In the 8th and 7th centuries BC, demographic crises (famine, overcrowding, etc.), stasis, a developing need for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland after wars, motivated Greeks to settle in southern Italy, including Apulia. With colonization, Greek culture was exported to Italy, with its dialects of the Ancient Greek language, its religious rites and its traditions of the independent polis. An original Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native Italic civilisations. It is from this distinctive civilisation, rather than Greece per se, from which you are descended.
Before Italy, your ancestors, the Illyrians (Ancient Greek: Ἰλλυριοί, Illyrioi; Latin: Illyrii or Illyri) were a group of Indo-European tribes, who inhabited part of the western Balkans. The territory the Illyrians inhabited came to be known as Illyria to theGreeks and Romans who first identified the territory, and very roughly corresponds to Yugoslavia and Albania. The first account of Illyrian peoples comes from an ancient Greek text of the middle of the 4th century BC that describes coastal passages in the Mediterranean.
The name "Illyrians", as applied by the ancient Greeks to their northern neighbors, referred to a broad, ill-defined group of peoples who were not especially linguistically or culturally homogeneous. These were your last ancestors to actually reside in "Greece and the Balkans". The Illyrian tribes never collectively identified as “Illyrians” and it is unlikely that they used any collective nomenclature at all. The real Illyrians were actually a specific Illyrian tribe (from whom you are not descended) who were among the first to encounter the ancient Greeks during the Bronze Age (3000 BC-1200 BC). The Greeks later applied the term Illyrians "pars pro toto" to all people with similar language and customs, including your tribe, the Iapyges. Your Iapygian ancestors migrated to the Italian peninsula from the geographic "Illyria" so they resided in Italy but were considered of “Illyric origin”.
Your Iapygian ancestors (Greek: Ἰάπυγες, Ĭāpyges; Latin: Iapyges, Iapygii) inhabited Apulia (now Puglia) in classical antiquity, lived in the eponymous region Iapygia, and eventually divided into three populations: your ancestors who came to be known as the Peucetians (Greek: Πευκέτιοι, romanized: Peukétioi; Latin: Peucetii, later also Greek: Ποίδικλοι, romanized: Poidikloi; Latin: Poediculi) who lived in central Apulia (now the province of Bari where Giovinazzi is located), the Dauni people, and the Messapi people. Your ancestor's land was eventually annexed by the Roman Republic and they were eventually Latinized and assimilated into Roman culture, but even then Greece was also part of the Roman empire so the ties between your ancestors and Greece continued, especially since it was a port (lots of Greek sailors passing through). Even after the fall of the Roman Empire, Greece and Apulia were both part of the Byzantine Empire, so still part of the same "country".
The nation-state of "Italy" did not really exist until March 17, 1861 when the various states on the Italian pennisula were unified under Emmanuel II, so your DNA is not so much "Greek" (or even "Italian") as it is Peucetian and Sicilian.
