And I'm tired of people pretending they're the same just to not hurt the fee fee of the meds.
Modern Greeks and Italians are the result of various ethnic replacement. This also has little to do with the Arabic and Ottoman occupation as both left a more than dismissable genetic legacy.
Modern southern Italians are the descendant of eastern slave that were imported by the Roman Empire. Including Rome itself, the southern half of Italy is entirely mutted and the people living there today have almost as much in common with levantines than with Northern Italians. Northern Italians themselves were historically their own thing and closer to the Celtic tribes of france than the rest of Italy. As a matter of fact, this region was called Cisalpine Gaul in ancient time. If you want to simplify things, you could say that northern Italian are actually just French.
Modern Greeks are the result of the mixing between the descendant of the Acheans and Hellenized Levantines. In a situation similar to Southern Italy, they are now as much Levantines as they are Southern European
>Does that mean that they were nordics?
Not necessarily, if anything they were most likely closer to modern day southern european, but still "more european" than the people that inhabits these region today
>Does that mean that Southern European are not whites?
Depend on your definition, but no. Although Greek and Southern Italians are heavily mixed and tend to stray away from the general european cluster, other southern european are fine.
>What about the people inhabiting modern day Mesopotamia, Egypt and such?
Same thing. No ancient civilization can claim to still exist today.