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Basque natives 'genetically unique since the Iron Age', says research
26/03/2021
BASQUE Country inhabitants who have no 'outside influence' in their DNA may truly be a different race and once had no connections to natives of the Iberian Peninsula as a whole – in fact, 'genetically unique', according to research at Barcelona's Pompeu Fabra University.
The origins of the Basque language, euskera, have already long been an historical enigma – although theories abound – since it does not appear to be etymologically linked to any other in use today; and the idea that its native speakers could be 'genetically isolated' may go hand in hand with this phenomenon.
Scientists suspect the singularity of the Basque language may have acted as a type of 'invisible fortress', a barrier to its people's mass migration or integration with other races in prehistoric times.
Although the language itself has frequently been the subject of research, this is the first study into the origins of its people – or, at least, the first specific and accurate rather than general one, and certainly the most exhaustive – and has been published in the magazine Current Biology.
An international team examined over 600,000 genetic markers in the genome of 1,970 people's DNA, both present-day Basque natives and those from the region over the course of many centuries, even millennia.
The first wide-scale 'local' analysis of a complete genome – covering a region encompassing a chunk of southern France and of the Cantabrian Sea strip and across both sides of the Pyrénées – combined 'allelic frequency and haplotype-based methods', according to team leader Dr David Comas of the Pompeu Fabra and the Evolutionary Biology Institute (IBE).
Linguists and geneticists took part, and their theory is that the unique nature of the euskera language was what 'isolated' the Basque population from 'later contact' with other peoples, such as the Roman Empire or the Islamic settlers who arrived in the eighth century and were largely expelled by the end of the 15th, unless they converted to Christianity.
Romans, Moors, and other migrating populations throughout Europe's history largely scattered their DNA in today's Spaniards, but not massively among the Basques, nor the other way around; as a result, a 'clear difference' and 'strong heterogeneous nature' was seen in the latter's genetic makeup compared with those of surrounding populations – this heterogeneity, or uniformity, contrasting with the ongoing evolving nature of those of other peoples geographically near, and going back to 'at least the Iron Age'.
The research covered 'micro-regions' within the Basque Country and local to it, says article author Dr André Flores-Bello.
“Like this, we took samples from a geographical region where euskera has always been spoken, from others where it has historically been spoken but where it eventually became lost, and from regions where it has never been spoken,” he explains.
In total, 18 micro-regions in southern France and northern Spain, including those in both countries bordering the Cantabrian Sea and Bay of Biscay, were examined.
They were then contrasted against other, modern-day and ancient samples of DNA from elsewhere in Europe.
It was found that although the Basque DNA was 'of a similar genetic composition to the rest of those of western Europe', it contained 'subtle differences' which had been present 'for at least 2,500 years' due to 'not having mixed much with other populations.
“For example, we did not find any genetic influence from northern Africa in Basque DNA, whilst we did find this in the majority of populations native to the Iberian Peninsula; neither did we find traces of other migrations in Basque DNA, such as the Romans,” Dr Comas reveals.
Once these differences were established, the next step was to determine how different the native Basques were from each other.
During this stage of the research, it was found that those populations geographically close to each other were genetically similar, 'basically because of their shared history', but that those from areas on the outer edges of the Basque territory had more genetic influences from other historical populations than those from the centre of these territories did, given that the latter were more isolated whilst the former had more of a tendency to overlap.
A 'high level of compartmentalisation' was discovered within an 'extremely small region' – something 'rarely found within very small areas of land' – and was 'probably because of the different dialects of euskera' which 'may have emerged much earlier than was originally believed', creating an 'internal barrier' within the Basque territory itself, the article says.
The euskera language was not standardised until 1968, and the 'standard' Basque tongue was not in near-universal use until the 1980s, researchers say.
“Until now, we believed that the different dialects of euskera were formed during the Middle Ages, but we would now hypothesise that they might have appeared much earlier, which could explain the unique genetic structure,” says Dr Comas.
“This research paves the way for a much more focused line of investigation, thanks to its multi-disciplinary viewpoints which have combined disparate areas of knowledge – history, linguistics, genetics – and which allows us to put our weight behind a much more complete study.
“The enormous quantity of genetic markers and samples that we have employed, together with the sophisticated computational methods available to us, should allow us to answer questions that, until now, we have not even been able to ask, and opens the door to a much more local knowledge of a much more recent history of our species.”
Euskera is currently spoken by around 751,500 people – roughly the equivalent of the population of Valencia city, 90% of whom are on the 'Spanish side' of the Basque territories, which include the three Basque Country provinces, neighbouring Navarra, and three former provinces in Pyrénéen France.
About 30% of today's Spanish Basque territory inhabitants use the language.
Research has hinted it may be linked to the original Iberian language, known as íbero, mostly in use on the Peninsula around 2,600 years ago but which mostly died out from around 200 AD due to the Latinisation of southern Europe with the expansion of the Roman Empire.
This would make it one of the oldest European languages in use today.
Related Topics
BASQUE Country inhabitants who have no 'outside influence' in their DNA may truly be a different race and once had no connections to natives of the Iberian Peninsula as a whole – in fact, 'genetically unique', according to research at Barcelona's Pompeu Fabra University.
The origins of the Basque language, euskera, have already long been an historical enigma – although theories abound – since it does not appear to be etymologically linked to any other in use today; and the idea that its native speakers could be 'genetically isolated' may go hand in hand with this phenomenon.
Scientists suspect the singularity of the Basque language may have acted as a type of 'invisible fortress', a barrier to its people's mass migration or integration with other races in prehistoric times.
Although the language itself has frequently been the subject of research, this is the first study into the origins of its people – or, at least, the first specific and accurate rather than general one, and certainly the most exhaustive – and has been published in the magazine Current Biology.
An international team examined over 600,000 genetic markers in the genome of 1,970 people's DNA, both present-day Basque natives and those from the region over the course of many centuries, even millennia.
The first wide-scale 'local' analysis of a complete genome – covering a region encompassing a chunk of southern France and of the Cantabrian Sea strip and across both sides of the Pyrénées – combined 'allelic frequency and haplotype-based methods', according to team leader Dr David Comas of the Pompeu Fabra and the Evolutionary Biology Institute (IBE).
Linguists and geneticists took part, and their theory is that the unique nature of the euskera language was what 'isolated' the Basque population from 'later contact' with other peoples, such as the Roman Empire or the Islamic settlers who arrived in the eighth century and were largely expelled by the end of the 15th, unless they converted to Christianity.
Romans, Moors, and other migrating populations throughout Europe's history largely scattered their DNA in today's Spaniards, but not massively among the Basques, nor the other way around; as a result, a 'clear difference' and 'strong heterogeneous nature' was seen in the latter's genetic makeup compared with those of surrounding populations – this heterogeneity, or uniformity, contrasting with the ongoing evolving nature of those of other peoples geographically near, and going back to 'at least the Iron Age'.
The research covered 'micro-regions' within the Basque Country and local to it, says article author Dr André Flores-Bello.
“Like this, we took samples from a geographical region where euskera has always been spoken, from others where it has historically been spoken but where it eventually became lost, and from regions where it has never been spoken,” he explains.
In total, 18 micro-regions in southern France and northern Spain, including those in both countries bordering the Cantabrian Sea and Bay of Biscay, were examined.
They were then contrasted against other, modern-day and ancient samples of DNA from elsewhere in Europe.
It was found that although the Basque DNA was 'of a similar genetic composition to the rest of those of western Europe', it contained 'subtle differences' which had been present 'for at least 2,500 years' due to 'not having mixed much with other populations.
“For example, we did not find any genetic influence from northern Africa in Basque DNA, whilst we did find this in the majority of populations native to the Iberian Peninsula; neither did we find traces of other migrations in Basque DNA, such as the Romans,” Dr Comas reveals.
Once these differences were established, the next step was to determine how different the native Basques were from each other.
During this stage of the research, it was found that those populations geographically close to each other were genetically similar, 'basically because of their shared history', but that those from areas on the outer edges of the Basque territory had more genetic influences from other historical populations than those from the centre of these territories did, given that the latter were more isolated whilst the former had more of a tendency to overlap.
A 'high level of compartmentalisation' was discovered within an 'extremely small region' – something 'rarely found within very small areas of land' – and was 'probably because of the different dialects of euskera' which 'may have emerged much earlier than was originally believed', creating an 'internal barrier' within the Basque territory itself, the article says.
The euskera language was not standardised until 1968, and the 'standard' Basque tongue was not in near-universal use until the 1980s, researchers say.
“Until now, we believed that the different dialects of euskera were formed during the Middle Ages, but we would now hypothesise that they might have appeared much earlier, which could explain the unique genetic structure,” says Dr Comas.
“This research paves the way for a much more focused line of investigation, thanks to its multi-disciplinary viewpoints which have combined disparate areas of knowledge – history, linguistics, genetics – and which allows us to put our weight behind a much more complete study.
“The enormous quantity of genetic markers and samples that we have employed, together with the sophisticated computational methods available to us, should allow us to answer questions that, until now, we have not even been able to ask, and opens the door to a much more local knowledge of a much more recent history of our species.”
Euskera is currently spoken by around 751,500 people – roughly the equivalent of the population of Valencia city, 90% of whom are on the 'Spanish side' of the Basque territories, which include the three Basque Country provinces, neighbouring Navarra, and three former provinces in Pyrénéen France.
About 30% of today's Spanish Basque territory inhabitants use the language.
Research has hinted it may be linked to the original Iberian language, known as íbero, mostly in use on the Peninsula around 2,600 years ago but which mostly died out from around 200 AD due to the Latinisation of southern Europe with the expansion of the Roman Empire.
This would make it one of the oldest European languages in use today.
Related Topics
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