{"id":816,"date":"2010-02-24T06:10:02","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T13:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/?p=816"},"modified":"2010-03-05T10:20:42","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T17:20:42","slug":"on-the-autochthony-of-the-basques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/2010\/02\/24\/on-the-autochthony-of-the-basques\/","title":{"rendered":"On the autochthony of the Basques"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via the always-worth-reading <a title=\"Language Log on the Basques\" href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2132\">Language Log<\/a>, an <a title=\"The Basques may not be who we think they are\" href=\"http:\/\/www.springerlink.com\/content\/k24743n504551128\/\">article <\/a>entitled &#8220;A genome-wide survey does not show the genetic distinctiveness of Basques,&#8221; and a link to a more-readable discussion entitled &#8220;<a title=\"The Basques may not be who we think they are\" href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gnxp\/2010\/02\/the_basques_might_not_be_who_w.php\">The Basques may not be who we think they are<\/a>.&#8221;\u00a0 The short summary is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Our analysis showed that, when a genome-wide perspective is applied, Basques are not particularly differentiated from other Iberian populations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more-->That is, using modern genetic analysis techniques, the Basques turn out <strong>not<\/strong> to be the ancestral people of Europe, a widely held theory based on language and blood type evidence.\u00a0 Now, with better tools, we know that the blood type argument doesn&#8217;t hold true.<\/p>\n<p>The language is a language isolate, related to no others, and it seems on the basis of a variety of evidence (archeological, linguistic, textual) that the Basques have been in northwestern Spain and southern France for a long time.\u00a0\u00a0 But not without movement; it seems they&#8217;ve been moving steadily southward from Gascony, where their one known ancestor-language, Aquitanian, was found.<\/p>\n<p>Much more, and much more sophisticated analysis and explication is in R.L. Trask&#8217;s <em>History of Basque<\/em>, which I recently finished reading and which I can highly recommend.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a real labor of love and ought to be the last word on Basque historical linguistics for a while.\u00a0 The chapter on unproven relationships to other languages is in of itself an absolute gem, as close to a rollicking gutbuster as historical linguistics gets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via the always-worth-reading Language Log, an article entitled &#8220;A genome-wide survey does not show the genetic distinctiveness of Basques,&#8221; and a link to a more-readable discussion entitled &#8220;The Basques may not be who we think they are.&#8221;\u00a0 The short summary &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/2010\/02\/24\/on-the-autochthony-of-the-basques\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[117,1675],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-identity","category-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8jQA6-da","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":819,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}