Iberia’s Neolithic Farmers Linked to Modern-Day Basques

DNA samples were obtained from eight early Iberian farmers whose remains were discovered in Spain’s El Portalón cave in Atapuerca. Like populations in central and northern Europe, the Iberian farmers had traveled from the south and mixed with local hunter-gatherer groups.

“The genetic variation observed in modern-day Basques is significantly closer to the newly sequenced early farmers than to older Iberian hunter-gatherer samples,”

“Parts of that early farmer population probably remained relatively isolated since then (which we can still see in the distinct culture and language of Basques)

This sounds like a paradigm shifter. It’s been generally thought the Basques were the direct descendants of Cro Magnon Man (European Pleistocene hunter gatherers) and their language the product of Pleistocene European culture.

Now they say the Basque are also from western Asia just like the other farmer migrations into Europe. Cool.

America B.C.
by Barry Fell
(1976)
find it in a nearby library
A fascinating letter I received from a Shoshone Indian who had been traveling in the Basque country of Spain tells of his recognition of Shoshone words over there, including his own name, whose Shoshone meaning proved to match the meaning attached to a similar word by the modern Basques. Unfortunately I mislaid this interesting letter. If the Shoshone scholar who wrote to me should chance to see these words I hope he will forgive me and contact me again. The modern Basque settlers of Idaho may perhaps bring forth a linguist to investigate matters raised in this chapter. [p 173]
from Iberia, Not Siberia:
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).

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