The Basques (Basque: euskaldunak; Spanish: vascos; French: basques, English: /bɑːsks/ or /bæsks/) are an indigenous ethnic group characterised
by the Basque language, a common Basque culture and shared ancestry to the ancient Vascones and Aquitanians. Basques are indigenous to and primarily inhabit an area
traditionally known as the Basque Country (Basque: Euskal Herria), a region that is located around the western
end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of
north-central Spain and south-western France.
The Basques are known as:
·
Euskaldunak in Basque (this ethnonym means "the speakers of the Basque language"; to refer to all the inhabitants of the
Basque Country, the name euskal herritarrak is preferred)
·
Vasco in Spanish
·
Basque in French and English.
·
Basco in Gascon and Portuguese.
In Basque, the people call themselves the euskaldunak,
singular euskaldun, formed from euskal- (i.e.
"Basque (language)") and -dun (i.e. "one who
has"); euskaldun literally means a Basque speaker. Not
all Basques are Basque-speakers. Therefore, the neologism euskotar, plural euskotarrak, was
coined in the 19th century to mean a culturally Basque person, whether
Basque-speaking or not.
Language
A language isolate, Basque is believed to be one of the few
surviving pre-Indo-European
languages in Europe, and
the only one in Western Europe. The origin of the Basques and their languages are not conclusively
known, though the most accepted current theory is that early forms of Basque
developed prior to the arrival of Indo-European languages in the area, including the Romance languages that geographically surround the
Basque-speaking region. Basque has adopted a good deal of its vocabulary from
the Romance languages, and Basque speakers have in turn lent their own words to
Romance speakers.
The Basque alphabet uses the Latin script.
The Basque language is thought to be a genetic language isolate. Thus Basque contrasts with other European languages,
almost all of which belong to the broad Indo-European
language family. Another peculiarity
of Basque is that it has been spoken continuously in situ, in and around its present territorial location, for longer
than other modern European languages, which have all been introduced in
historical or prehistorical times through population migrations or other
processes of cultural transmission.
However, popular stereotypes characterizing Basque as "the
oldest language in Europe" and "unique among the world's
languages" may be misunderstood and lead to erroneous assumptions. Over
the centuries, Basque has remained in continuous contact with neighboring
western European languages with which it has come to share numerous lexical
properties and typological features; it is therefore misleading to exaggerate
the "outlandish" character of Basque. Basque is also a modern
language, and is established as a written and printed one used in present-day
forms of publication and communication, as well as a language spoken and used
in a very wide range of social and cultural contexts, styles, and registers.
The strongest distinction between the Basques and their
traditional neighbours is linguistic. Surrounded by Romance-language speakers, the Basques traditionally
spoke (and many still speak) a language that was not only non-Romance but
non-Indo-European. The prevailing belief amongst Basques, and forming part of
their national identity, is that their language has continuity with the people
who were in this region since not only pre-Roman and pre-Celtic times, but
since the Stone Age.
History
Since the Basque language is unrelated to Indo-European, it has
long been thought to represent the people or culture that occupied Europe
before the spread of Indo-European languages there. A comprehensive analysis of
Basque genetic patterns has shown that Basque genetic uniqueness predates
the arrival of agriculture in the Iberian Peninsula, about 7,000
years ago.
It is thought that Basques are a remnant of the early
inhabitants of Western Europe, specifically those of the Franco-Cantabrian
region. Basque tribes were
already mentioned in Roman times by Strabo and Pliny, including the Vascones, the Aquitani, and others. There is enough evidence to support the hypothesis
that at that time and later they spoke old varieties of the Basque language.
In the Early Middle Ages the territory between the Ebro and Garonne rivers was known as Vasconia, a vaguely defined cultural area and political entity
struggling to fend off pressure from the Iberian Visigothic kingdom and Muslim rule to the south, as well as the Frankishpush from the north. By the turn of the first millennium, the
territory of Vasconia had fragmented into different feudal
regions, such as Soule and Labourd, while south of the Pyrenees the Castile, Pamplona and the Pyrenean counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe, Ribagorza (later Kingdom of Aragon), and Pallars emerged as the main regional entities with Basque
population in the 9th and 10th centuries.
The Kingdom of Pamplona, a central Basque realm, later known
as Navarre, underwent a process of feudalization and was subjected to the
influence of its much larger Aragonese, Castilian and French neighbours.
Castile deprived Navarre of its coastline by conquering key western territories (1199–1201), leaving the kingdom landlocked. The Basques
were ravaged by the War of the Bands, bitter partisan wars between local ruling
families. Weakened by the Navarrese civil war, the bulk of the realm eventually fell before the onslaught of the Spanish
armies (1512–1524). However, the Navarrese territory north of the Pyrenees remained beyond the reach of an
increasingly powerful Spain. Lower Navarre became a province of France in 1620.
Nevertheless, the Basques enjoyed a great deal of
self-government until the French Revolution (1790) and the Carlist Wars (1839/1876), when the Basques supported heir
apparent Carlos V and
his descendants. On either side of the Pyrenees, the Basques lost their native institutions and laws held during the Ancien régime.
Since then, despite the current limited self-governing status of
the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre as settled by the Spanish Constitution, many
Basques have attempted higher degrees of self-empowerment (see Basque nationalism), sometimes by acts of violence. Labourd, Lower Navarre, and Soule were integrated
into the French department
system (starting 1790),
with Basque efforts to establish a region-specific political-administrative
entity failing to take off to date.
Genetics
In 1920, H. G. Wells referred to the Mediterranean race as the Iberian race. He regarded it as a fourth subrace of the Caucasian race, along with the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic subraces. He stated that the main ethnic group that most purely represented the racial stock of the Iberian race was the Basques, and that the Basques were the descendants of the Cro-Magnons. In 1994, in his book The History and Geography of Human Genes, population geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza stated that "there is support from many sides" for the hypothesis that the Basques are the descendants of the original Cro-Magnons.
Even before the development of modern genetics based on DNA sequencing, Basques were already noted for distinctive genetic patterns, such as possessing the highest global apportion of the Rh- blood type (35% phenotypically, 60% genetically). Additionally, the Basque population has virtually no B blood type, nor the related AB type. They have a high rate of O blood group but this is probably due to isolation.
Although they are genetically distinctive in some ways, the Basques are still very typically European in terms of their Y-DNA and mtDNAsequences, and in terms of some other genetic loci. These same sequences are widespread throughout the western half of Europe, especially along the western fringe of the continent.
The distinctiveness noted by studies of 'classical' genetic markers (such as blood groups) and the apparently "pre-Indo-European" nature of the Basque language has resulted in a popular and long-held view that Basques are "living fossils" of the earliest modern humans who colonized Europe. However, studies of the Y-chromosome found that on their direct male lineages, the vast majority of modern Basques have a common ancestry with other Western Europeans, namely a marked predominance of Haplogroup R1b.
Initially Haplogroup R1b was theorised to be that a Palaeolithic marker, introduced when Europe was repopulated after the Last Glacial Maximum, about 25,000 years ago. As such, Basque populations were used as proxy representatives for the "Palaeolithic component" in admixture studies that tried to quantify the extent of Neolithic diffusions. Such studies concluded that the main components in the European genomes appear to derive from ancestors whose features were similar to those of modern Basques and people of the Near East (or Western Asia), with average values greater than 35% for both these parental populations, regardless of whether molecular information is taken into account or not. The smallest degree of both Basque and Near Eastern admixture is found in Finland, whereas the highest values are, respectively, 70% "Basque" in Spain and roughly 60% "Near Eastern" in the Balkans. This theory encountered inconsistencies even prior to most recent chronological re-evaluations. That R1b should be a Palaeolithic marker was an ad hoc assumption suggested by Semino et al. (2000) and propagated by subsequent scholars without further analysis. Higher resolution STR analysis of R1b lineages from other western European populations (e.g. Italy or Britain) show that their populations appear to derive from the Basque ones.
More recent studies instead propose that R1b spread through Europe from southwest Asia in the Neolithic period or later, between 4,000 and 8,000 years ago.
Autosomal genetic studies have confirmed that Basques share:
· close genetic ties to other Europeans, especially with Spaniards, who have a common genetic identity of over 70% with Basques.
· homogeneity amongst both their Spanish and French populations, according to high-density SNP genotyping study done in May 2010, and;
· a genomic distinctiveness, relative to other European populations.
Several ancient DNA samples have been recovered and amplified from Palaeolithic sites in the Basque region. The collection of mtDNA haplogroups sampled there differed significantly compared to their modern frequencies. The authors concluded that there is "discontinuity" between ancient and modern Basques.
Thus, while Basques harbour some very archaic lineages (such as mtDNA Hg U8a), they are not of "undiluted Palaeolithic ancestry", nor are they ancestral to large parts of western Europe. Rather, their genetic distinctiveness is a result of centuries of low population size, genetic drift and endogamy.
New genetic findings, 2015
In 2015, a new scientific study of Basque DNA was published which seems to indicate that Basques are descendants of Neolithic farmers who mixed with local hunters before becoming genetically isolated from the rest of Europe for millennia. Mattias Jakobsson from Uppsala University in Sweden analysed genetic material from eight Stone Age human skeletons found in El Portalón Cavern in Atapuerca, northern Spain. These individuals lived between 3,500 and 5,500 years ago, after the transition to farming in southwest Europe. The results show that these early Iberian farmers are the closest ancestors to present-day Basques.
The official findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States America. "Our results show that the Basques trace their ancestry to early farming groups from Iberia, which contradicts previous views of them being a remnant population that trace their ancestry to Mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups," says Prof. Jakobsson.
Land and inheritance
Basques have a close attachment to their home (etxe(a) 'house,
home'), especially when this consists of the traditional self-sufficient,
family-run farm or baserri(a). Home in this context is synonymous with family roots.
Some Basque surnames were adapted from old baserri or habitation names. They typically related to a geographical orientation or other
locally meaningful identifying features. Such surnames provide even those
Basque whose families may have left the land generations ago with an important
link to their rural family origins: Bengoetxea "the house
of further down", Goikoetxea "the house
above", Landaburu "top of the field", Errekondo "next
to the stream", Elizalde "by the church", Mendizabal "wide
hill", Usetxe "house of birds" Ibarretxe "house
in the valley", Etxeberria "the new house", and
so on.
In contrast to surrounding regions, ancient Basque inheritance
patterns, recognised in the fueros, favour survival of the unity of inherited land holdings.
In a kind of primogeniture, these usually are inherited by either eldest male
or female. As in other cultures, the fate of other family members depended on
the assets of a family. The wealthy Basque families tended to provide for all
children in some way while the less affluent had only one asset to provide to
one child. However, this heir often provided for the rest of the family. Unlike
England with the strict primogeniture where the eldest son inherited everything
and did not provide for others. Even though they were provided for in some way
siblings had to make their livings by other means. Before the advent of
industrialisation, this system resulted in the emigration of many rural Basques
to Spain, France or the Americas. Harsh by modern standards, this custom
resulted in a great many enterprising figures of Basque origin who went into the
world to earn their way, from Spanish conquistadors such as Lope de Aguirre and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, to
explorers, missionaries and saints of the Catholic Church, such as Francis Xavier.
A widespread belief that Basque society was originally matriarchal is at odds with the current, clearly patrilineal kinship system and inheritance structures. Some scholars and
commentators have attempted to reconcile these points by assuming that
patrilineal kinship represents an innovation. In any case, the social position
of women in both traditional and modern Basque society is somewhat better than
in neighbouring cultures, and women have a substantial influence in decisions
about the domestic economy. In the past, some women participated in collective
magical ceremonies. They were key participants in a rich folklore, today
largely forgotten.
Society
Historically, Basque society can be described as being somewhat
at odds with Roman and later European societal norms.
Strabo's account of the north of Spain in his Geographica (written between approximately 20 BC and
20 AD) makes a mention of "a sort of woman-rule—not at all a mark of
civilization" (Hadington 1992), a first mention of the—for the
period—unusual position of women. "Women could inherit and control
property as well as officiate in churches. Combined with the issue of lingering
pagan beliefs, this enraged the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition, perhaps leading to one of the largest witch hunts in the Basque town of Logroño in 1610".
This preference for female dominance existed well into the 20th
century:
...matrilineal inheritance laws, and agricultural work performed by women
continued in Basque country until the early twentieth century. For more than a
century, scholars have widely discussed the high status of Basque women in law
codes, as well as their positions as judges, inheritors, and arbitrators
through ante-Roman, medieval, and modern times. The system of laws governing
succession in the French Basque region reflected total equality between the
sexes. Up until the eve of the French Revolution, the Basque woman was truly
‘the mistress of the house', hereditary guardian, and head of the lineage.
Although the kingdom of Navarre did adopt feudalism, most Basques also
possessed unusual social institutions different from those of the rest of
feudal Europe. Some aspects of this include the elizate tradition where local house-owners met in front of the
church to elect a representative to send to the juntas and Juntas Generales (such as the Juntas Generales de
Vizcaya or Guipúzcoa) which administered much larger
areas. Another example was the fact that in the medieval period most land was
owned by the farmers, not the Church or a king.
*****Copied from Wikipedia, Basque People, and Basque Language
No comments:
Post a Comment