Origins of the Basques

[TheLastOne36]

I have always wondered, where did the basques come from? and how did they get there language? just wanting to put that one to rest...

[Knight-Dragon]

I have always thought that they (or at least their language) is the last remaining one of Neolithic Europe, before the Celtic, Roman, Germanic etc waves arrived in the region...

[JJ Boston]

As far as I understand it, they simply settled there as early as 3,000 BC (early medieval times at latest) and have been there since. They have their own unique language carried over from those first Basques that I'm pretty sure isn't connected to any of the other major languages.

"Before God was God and boulders were boulders, Basques were already Basques."

[Steph]

They are supposed to be one of the few indigeneous people in Europe, have been there before all the other people came and kept their old language.


In Europe, you have:
Basques: Northern Spain and Southern France
Crimean Karaites: Crimean Peninsula in Southern Ukraine
Crimean Tatars: Crimean Peninsula in Southern Ukraine
Krymchaks: Crimean Peninsula in Southern Ukraine
Izhorians Northwest of Russia
Komi: Komi Republic in Northeast of European Russia
Nenets: Northeastern part of European Russia
Sami: Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Kola peninsula in the Northwest of Russia
Veps: Republic of Karelia, Northwest of Russia

[warpus]

Aren't Tartars a Mongolian tribe?

[Steph]

Originally Posted by warpus

Aren't Tartars a Mongolian tribe?

Probably, but these are tatars

[Eran of Arcadia]

Originally Posted by Steph

They are supposed to be one of the few indigeneous people in Europe, have been there before all the other people came and kept their old language.

Except they probably weren't the very first, there were other humans, even Neanderthals or other hominids there, and it's not like they evolved there . . .

Which just demonstrates the uselessness of the word "indigenous".

[TheLastOne36]

Sami: Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Kola peninsula in the Northwest of Russia

Sami or Lapps were Finns that migrated north and were to far north that Christianity, European culture etc. never reached them.

[Arwon]

The short version is: they were there before the Celts, before the Romans and before the Phoenecians and, with some mixing of genetics, language and culture, have remained largely a distinct group in the Pyrenees and on other side of it.

Longer version gets murker. As murky as the question "origin of the French," perhaps. We're projecting back thousands of years and it's very difficult to draw clear pictures given how much people move and intermix.

Firstly, language != ethnicity. The Basque language is an isolate, but that just means its relatives have disappeared under the weight of Celtic and then Romance languages. They didn't "get" their language from anywhere--they simply kept it. It was probably related to other Iberian languages from pre-Celtic times, but although those disappeared, the speakers didn't, they're probably largely still there as part of the genetic mixture of Spain and France. I'm fairly certain that I've read that Spanish, Basque, British and Irish DNA records are quite similar, suggesting substantial common origins.

Just because a group of people speak related languages doesn't necessarily mean they're closely related, and the converse is also true.

Secondly, ethnicity != genetics. The modern "Basque nation" is as constructed a national myth as any other, albeit one with a fairly strong claim to real existence, although it was formed partly in xenophobic response to economic migration into the Basque country in the 19th century. Early Basque nationalism was actually rather objectionably racist. Even today, given that Basque-speakers are a minority in the Spanish Pais Vasco and a smaller minority in the French Pays Basque Nord, thanks to past and present Spanish and French efforts at centralisation and cultural standardisation and economic migration (particularly along the Bay of Biscay) it gets difficult to say who is and isn't Basque.

So a truer answer would be "the Basque nation is a fairly recent invention based in some uniquely old and fairly compelling sources of identity and differentiation."

One thing I find interesting is the apparently Basque influence on Romance languages in the area, especially Castillian and Aragonese. One explanation would be that related languages to Basque formed a substrata to the Romance languages which gradually came to completely replace them (while keeping some features). It's impossible to know, of course. Once you get so far back in time, and with such a scant record of language change, established methods of comparative linguistics are very difficult to apply, and it's next to impossible to distinguish areal contact from language evolution.

[SeleucusNicator]

Originally Posted by TheLastOne36

Sami or Lapps were Finns that migrated north and were to far north that Christianity, European culture etc. never reached them.

The Lapps are not Finns. They're representative of a wide swath of Uralic peoples that lived in what is now modern-day Russia before the coming of the Slavs and other Indo-European speakers. I think it would be correct to speak of them as indigenous, at least relative to the people living around them.

[Thorgalaeg]

Arwon summed it up pretty well. Nothing to add.

[warpus]

Originally Posted by Steph

Probably, but these are tatars

Same thing

Originally Posted by Arwon

Longer version gets murker. As murky as the question "origin of the French," perhaps.

Aren't the French mainly a mix between Romanized Germanic tribes (Franks) and Romanized Celts/Gauls ?

[Steph]

Originally Posted by warpus

Aren't the French mainly a mix between Romanized Germanic tribes (Franks) and Romanized Celts/Gauls ?

And Italian emigrant, and Spanih emigrant, and Polish emigrant, and African, and people from North Africa, etc.

[Verbose]

Originally Posted by SeleucusNicator

The Lapps are not Finns. They're representative of a wide swath of Uralic peoples that lived in what is now modern-day Russia before the coming of the Slavs and other Indo-European speakers. I think it would be correct to speak of them as indigenous, at least relative to the people living around them.

It seems to be even more complicated. There's a stratum come from the Urals, but it's would seem it's not the oldest. (Check out the work of Svante Pääbo for this.) One interpretation of the genetics involved is that the earliest ancestors is a branch from the people who migrated into Europe about 15000 years ago. They wandered off on their own along the ice-shelf until they eneded up on the cost in northern (modern) Norway. There they remained practically out of contact with the rest of Europe until about 1000 years ago.

What the Sami, Basque and a bunch of other people might have in common is that they have traditionally been living in places bad for agriculture. One possible way Indoeuropean languages originally spread was through the adoption of agriculture — form following function, sort of. In which case it makes sense the people high up in the mountains, on the arctic circle, in the truly deep forests etc., never had reason to switch language.

[Kraznaya]

Originally Posted by Verbose

What the Sami, Basque and a bunch of other people might have in common is that they have traditionally been living in places bad for agriculture. One possible way Indoeuropean languages originally spread was through the adoption of agriculture — form following function, sort of. In which case it makes sense the people high up in the mountains, on the arctic circle, in the truly deep forests etc., never had reason to switch language.

What makes you think they were there to begin with? Maybe the Indo-Euro speakers kicked them into these remote regions when they arrived and took the land?

[dannyshenanigan]

If I'm not mistaken the Picts of Scotland were another "indigenous" peoples probably related to the neolithic peoples who built stonehenge.
I have heard these pre-Celtic peoples of Britain called Iberian types because of their similarities with the Iberian peoples of Spain, whom the Basques may be related to.
There are no more Pictish peoples or any records of their language, but I wonder if there is any connection.

[Verbose]

Originally Posted by Kraznaya

What makes you think they were there to begin with? Maybe the Indo-Euro speakers kicked them into these remote regions when they arrived and took the land?

Yes, that's the 19th c. theory based on European experiences of imperialism and colonisation at that time.

I guess archeologists, linguists and geneticists grew tired of it, since there isn't much in the form of supporting evidence. That's why they are trying to propose more realistic mechanisms for a continent-wide shift in language which was chronologically coinincidental with the shift to agriculture.

The proposition is that indoeuropean was adopted by groups living where agriculture is possible, but not where there's no point to try it.

Why accept that over theories stressing massive waves of humanity rolling in from the east to supplant the aboriginals, very much how Europeans did it in America? Well, since certanities are very few and far between in history as ancient as this, I guess it's mostly down to Occham's Razor.

Renfrew, A.C., 1987, Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, London: Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6612-5

[vb1]

Originally Posted by JJ Boston

As far as I understand it, they simply settled there as early as 3,000 BC (early medieval times at latest) and have been there since. They have their own unique language carried over from those first Basques that I'm pretty sure isn't connected to any of the other major languages.

"Before God was God and boulders were boulders, Basques were already Basques."

Actually their language does bear some resemblances to ones used in the Caucasus Region, for example Abkhaz. Which raises some interesting questions.