What makes basque people unique

In fact, our genetic data correlates very well with the areas where Basque is spoken. And not only that, we have seen genetic differences between populations that speak different dialects of the language. This geographical compartmentalization related to dialects is uncommon in such small populations. And, curiously, the genetic data show that the dialects of the Basque have emerged long before the Middle Age, as it was thought until now. Well, as I said, we have been looking at the uniqueness of the Basque population for many years and this theory was the starting point for this work.

With the help of a team of linguists , we selected the individuals to study based on their geographical and linguistic background. We studied individuals from 18 microgeographic areas: areas where historically they have spoken Basque and surrounding areas where they have not spoken the language.

It is true that they have coexisted, but much less than in other areas of the Iberian Peninsula. We see that Basque has some latin words, which confirms there was cultural contact. But according to genetic data, these contacts were less frequent than in the rest of the Iberian Peninsula.

It all started several years ago in a workshoop held in Bayonne , in the French Basque Country. There, linguists, anthropologists, historians, geneticists, etc. We held several meetings until we delineated the starting hypothesis and the questions that we wanted to answer using the genetic data. No, a similar case is the one of Sardinia , where the population also has many genetic peculiarities. But in the case of the Sardinians, we have a very clear explanation: they have suffered isolation because they are in an island.

Here, the difference is that we understand geographical boundaries very well, but socio-cultural barriers are harder to understand. Although our genetic data clearly correlates with Basque and with the dialectal variants of the language. Flores-Bello et al. Genetic origins, singularity and heterogeneity of Basques , Current Biology , March DOI: Your email address will not be published. Dr Aiguader, 88 , Barcelona, Spain. Related Stories.

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