See it that way...we civilized the entire mediterranean area. We called it mare nostrum. The roman empire was very sucessfully in creating a large empire with unity. But when it felt apart we lost conncetion to our "brothers in north africa and levante. Look...we italians feel like brothers with greeks, french, spanish. But northern africans share nothing with us anymore. Maybe looks still a bit but they have become culturally alien for us. You know in roman empire times it was constantly mixing. A roman soldier settled in alexandria in egypt, married there and got children. His son becomes soldier and is stationed in france. Later stays there, marries a women there and gets a child there which becomes a soldier and settles in germania and so on. So yes, we share genetics. But thats it. There simply is no unity left with our "souther brothers".
