Although questionable in the minds of most anthropologists, some linguistic evidence might point toward the Iberian Peninsula. In the 1960's, the Morris Swadesh in the Handbook of Middle American Indians, claimed he found a connection between the Nadene (Athasbascan) linguistic family of North America and the Basque linguistic isolate. This connection, he argued, dated back thousands of years. Basque is the only European language to have survived the influence of proto-Indo-European, which entered the Basque region more than 5,000 years ago. One can infer then that Basque language is at least 5,000 years old, and some argue it is far older. The Basque themselves contend they have survived in their homeland for tens of thousands of years. Though Swadesh has been criticized as a lumper when it comes to linguistic correlations, the claim is nonetheless intriguing under the circumstances. It should be noted that linguist Merritt Ruhlen recently reported to have located a language related to Nadene in Asia. Ket, the only remaining member of the Yeniseian family of languages, shares common words like "birch bark" with some Nadene languages. Ket is spoken by about 550 people (out of a total population of 1,100) who live along the Yenisei River in central Siberia (Lysek 2000).
The Ket link has been well accepted. Basque is another story. Like I said, if anyone wants to prove the link, show the grammatical correspondence with a convincing and systematic set of sound changes one to the other—not just a few similar roots.
I don’t care for much of the research on transoceanic contact if it’s based on superficial commonalities: “Hey look...here’s a design motif that looks like this design motif.” That said, anyone not keeping an open mind as to such contacts is being rash. There was a Bishop of Gardar who was said to be going to Markland/Vinland and was never heard from again...that was in the early 1300s. There are also casual reports of Norse ships bringing timber from those areas round about the same time.
What I mean is no one’s found an Irish settlement comparable to L’Anse aux Meadows. All we have is Norse testimony—which is intriguing and perhaps even accurate, but not solid proof.