Origin of the Basques
Modern Basque, a descendant or close relative of Aquitanian and Proto-Basque, is the only pre-Indo-European language that is extant in western Europe.
[2] Ludomir R. Lozny states that "Wiik's controversial ideas are rejected by the majority of the scholarly community, but they have attracted the enormous interest of a wider audience.
The results of the study clearly support the hypothesis of a partial genetic continuity of contemporary Basques with the preceding Paleolithic/Mesolithic settlers of their homeland.
[4] Paleogenetic investigations by the Complutense University of Madrid[5] indicate that the Basque people have a genetic profile coincident with the rest of the European population and that goes back to Prehistoric times.
In spite of its high frequency in Basques, Y-STR internal diversity of R1b-DF27 is lower there, and results in more recent age estimates", implying it was brought to the region from elsewhere.
[17] Mattias Jakobsson from Uppsala University in Sweden analysed genetic material from eight Stone Age human skeletons found in El Portalón Cavern in Atapuerca, northern Spain.
[23] In 2019, a study was published in Science in which a more fine-tuned and deep time-transect of Iberian ancient populations including the Basque were analyzed.
From their abstract, it says: "and we reveal that present-day Basques are best described as a typical Iron Age population without the admixture events that later affected the rest of Iberia."
These include: Theories regarding the possibility of such a shared root have been put forward by Louis Lucien Bonaparte, Miguel de Unamuno, Julio Caro Baroja and others.
The German linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt proposed, in the early 19th Century, a thesis in which he stated that the Basque people were Iberians, following some studies that he had conducted.
The comparison between the matrilineal and patrilineal DNA of the native peoples from the Basque Country and Georgia has allowed the discovery of significant differences.
In spite of its high frequency in Basques, Y-STR internal diversity of R1b-DF27 is lower there, and results in more recent age estimates", implying it was brought to the region from elsewhere.
[46] While Basques harbour some very archaic mtDNA lineages,[47][48] they are not of "undiluted Palaeolithic ancestry" but of significantly early Neolithic origin with a connection to the isolate Sardinian people.
[52] Mattias Jakobsson from Uppsala University in Sweden analysed genetic material from eight Stone Age human skeletons found in El Portalón Cavern in Atapuerca, northern Spain.
From their abstract, it says: "and we reveal that present-day Basques are best described as a typical Iron Age population without the admixture events that later affected the rest of Iberia."
In Iberia, these later admixture (interbreeding) events were with central European (Celtic), eastern Mediterranean (Phoenician, Greek and Roman), northern African (Carthaginian and Mauritanian) and northern European (Gothic and Frankish) populations, and genomic ancestry from them are found in varying degrees in all or most present-day Iberian populations, except – albeit to a limited extent even there – for the Basque.
[24] The early story of the Basque people was recorded by Roman classical writers, historians and geographers, such as Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela.
The present-day Basque Country was, by the time of the Roman arrival in the Iberian Peninsula, inhabited by Aquitanian and Celtic tribes.
The Aquitanians spoke a language similar to, or identical to, Proto-Basque and included several tribes, such as the Vascones, who were located at both sides of the western Pyrenees.
[56] About a century later, Ptolemy also listed the coastal Oeasso (Οἰασσώ) beside the Pyrénées to the Vascones, together with 15 inland towns, including Pompelon.
The border port of Irún, where a Roman harbour and other remains have been uncovered, is the accepted identification of the coastal town mentioned by Strabo and Ptolemy.
[64] Developed by Esteban de Garibay and Andrés Poza, a "legend" states that the Basque people are direct descendants of Tubal, grandson of Noah, fifth son of Japheth.
