The Basque town has several peculiarities. One of them is to speak the language that is considered the oldest in Europe; the Euskera; whose origins would be found thousands of years ago and which has no relationship with any modern European language. It has been suggested that the Basques are even genetically different from the rest of Europeans and that due to isolation they have kept their heritage intact since Prehistory. But what does science say about this? In this video we are going to try to shed some light on the origin of Basque, Basque genetics, its relationship with other communities with which they share the Iberian Peninsula and much more. Let us begin! The origin of the Basque people has been an axis of debate for generations. The Basques have remained semi-isolated for centuries; preserving a language that is nothing like that of its neighbors. In relation to this, several stories and explanations have been created about the origin of this people and the survival of the Basque language to this day. It has been said that Basque is related to Berber, others claim that it is actually related to Caucasian languages such as Armenian or Georgian. Also that it descends from some prehistoric language of the hunters and gatherers who first inhabited the Iberian Peninsula. On the other hand, there is a myth that the Basques are the original Iberians and that due to their relative isolation they have remained purer than the rest of the peninsular people; where neither Roman, Visigothic or Muslim influences have left traces in their blood. How true are these statements and hypotheses? The truth is that although they did not have the Visigothic or Muslim influence that did exist in the rest of the Peninsula; except that; His story is quite similar to that of the rest of the Spaniards. Today Basques in Europe are concentrated in a specific region known as Euskal Herria; where Basque culture is well represented and is made up of two areas divided by the Pyrenees; one part Spanish and one part French. It is estimated that the Basque language has existed for centuries; rather; The archaic Basque language from which current Basque evolved was geographically much more widespread than now, but due to political and cultural reasons it was restricted to the extent it is today where it is still used along with Spanish and French. When the Romans met the ancestors of the Basques they called them Vascones. From accounts of the time it is known that they were a fairly heterogeneous town in terms of forms of political organization and life. On the one hand, those from the North lived in villages and even caves and practiced livestock farming. They were practically in the Bronze Age. Those to the south focused more on agriculture and trade with their Celtic and Iberian neighbors:; which led them to the iron age and also speaking the language of their neighbors along with their own. This openness of the southern Basques led them to assimilate more easily during Roman rule. The Romans built important roads and even founded cities in Basque territory. In 179 BC; The Roman politician and military man Graco founded the city of Gracurris in La Rioja; predecessor of the current Alfaro. Pompey the Great founded the city of Pompaello, which is today's Pamplona, and would derive its name from two words pompeii, the name of the military man, and ilún, which means city in ancient Basque. Even Roman legions were composed of Basques who acted in remote areas of the Roman Empire such as Holland and Germany. It is known that a cohort of the Basque tribe of the Bardulos was settled on the border with Scotland until at least the 3rd century AD. So the Basques , although little Romanized compared to the Celts and Iberians of that time, were a functional and full part of the empire. Even if we go back in time far beyond written history we find clues that the ancestors of the Basques share a history similar to that of the rest of Western Europeans. Genetic research is providing some pretty interesting evidence. Archaeological discoveries and analysis DNA studies seem to indicate that the Basques have only been genetically isolated since the Iron Age and not since the time when the hunting and gathering peoples who escaped the Ice Age took refuge in the Iberian Peninsula. The ancestors of the Basques suffered the genetic influence of the Yamna who settled in the region 4,500 years ago, erasing the native male genetics and replacing it with their own. This people of shepherds and warriors who, thanks to their mastery of iron and horses, spread from the plains north of the Black Sea and dominated a good part of Eurasia, also left their genetic mark among the Basques, something that occurred equally throughout the Iberian Peninsula. . Just as in America the Y chromosome, which is the male, is of European origin in 90% of the population; the Y chromosome of the Basques is overwhelmingly of Yamnaya origin. To learn more about the Yamnaya, at the end of this video another video completely dedicated to this town will appear as a recommendation ; So in this report I am not going to dwell too much on them. Another investigation into Basque genetics based on 3,000 samples of native Basques found evidence that 70% of Basque men descend from the same man who lived 4,500 years ago and who was baptized as Aita by experts. Although in the rest of the Iberian Peninsula there are also descendants of this individual, the proportion falls to 40%. It is not known if the fact that the supposed Aita had so many offspring is due to the fact that he had harems of women with whom he conceived children or if random events occurred by which his descendants have become proportionally more successful and abundant in relation to the rest of the lineages of the peninsula. In fact, their descendants can also be traced to other Western European countries, but in a much lower proportion. Something similar and on a larger scale happens with the famous Genghis Khan who was born in 1162 and today it is estimated that he has 16 million descendants in the regions where he founded his empire. Beyond genetic evidence, one of the keys to understanding the origin of the Basques would be their most characteristic feature: the use of Basque. While most European peoples adopted languages descended from Proto-Indo-European that the Yamna brought with them; the lineage of Basque survived this cultural influence. The question is whether it descends from the Paleolithic languages of Europe or whether it arrived with the farmers who later settled in the area. The study of Basque has given rise to different explanations based on comparisons with other modern languages and different dead languages. Until now, the evidence that has the most weight is the fairly proven relationship of proximity that Basque has with Ibero; the still almost undeciphered language that was spoken in the Iberian Peninsula since times before the Romans. A good example of this similarity occurs in the numbering in both Basque and Iberian, the numbering system is the same; It is based on the number 20 and not 10 and the names of the numbers are very similar. Although it has not been possible to decipher what the vast majority of the inscriptions in Ibero say; It is known what it sounded like and experts find it very similar to Basque. Perhaps Iberian and Basque were the same language at the time or they would have the same origin as happens today with similar languages such as Spanish and Italian. Although similarities have also been found between Basque and the Berber language and with those of some peoples of the Caucasus such as Georgian or Armenian. Curiously, five centuries before Christ there was a kingdom south of the Caucasus mountains that was called Iberia. One theory that could explain this is that the ancestors of the Basques and Iberians could have been a group of Iberians who left the Caucasus in search of metals and other natural resources that the coasts of the western Mediterranean offered in abundance. According to the historian Appian of Alexandria; who lived between the 1st and 2nd centuries after Christ: "some people think that the Iberians of Asia were the ancestors of the Iberians of Europe; others think that the first emigrated from the second; still others think that They simply have the same name since their customs and languages are similar." We do not know how true these statements are, but what we do know is that language scholars have dedicated themselves to finding similarities between Basque and Georgian or Basque and Armenian and have found quite a few; especially with regard to words that define elements of agriculture and livestock, geographical denominations and also forms of syntax associated with Basque. A number of theories abound; all with a similar degree of uncertainty: even some authors seeing the geographical names of rivers and mountains throughout Europe believe that Basque would be the remnant of a language that was used from the Atlantic to the Caucasus before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. Until now nothing is 100% reliably confirmed and the most It is likely that it will never be. Don't forget to like and leave your opinions on this topic in the comments box, we will find ourselves in another video behind the data, greetings
