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>Instead, two-thirds of Imperial individuals (31 out of 48) overlap with central and eastern Mediterranean populations, such as those from southern and central Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta. An additional quarter (13 out of 48) of the sampled Imperial Romans overlap with Levantine and Near Eastern populations, projecting close to four contemporaneous individuals from Lebanon
>One study indicates that during Late Antiquity this Eastern Mediterranean migration subsides and is replaced by the migration of northern barbarian European nations. Consequently, the ethnic composition begins to take an increasingly European character, a trend that intensifies during the Migration Period and continues even long after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, as the geopolitics of Italy tie it ever more with its northern neighbors, e.g. via the Holy Roman Empire. These contrasting migratory waves may have contributed to the modern genetic differentiation along the length of the Italian peninsula, with the contrasting Spanish-like Northern Italy, and Greek-like Southern Italy. The authors suggest that this has also been contributed by Arab conquests, especially via the Emirate of Sicily, after Western Rome had already fallen. This is unlikely, considering that only 0.6% of modern Southern Italians have the typical Maghrebin core haplotype. Overall, the estimated Central Balkan and North Western European paternal contributions in South Italy and Sicily are about 63% and 26%, respectively