{"id":64275,"date":"2017-01-23T19:46:44","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T23:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=64275"},"modified":"2017-01-23T19:49:13","modified_gmt":"2017-01-23T23:49:13","slug":"basque-origins-mystery-solved-by-ancient-dna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=64275","title":{"rendered":"Basque origins mystery solved by ancient DNA"},"content":{"rendered":"

SOTT.net
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\u00a9 Agence France-Presse Two men saw a tree trunk with a “tronza” (traditional Basque saw) during a rural sports championship<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The distinct language and genetic make-up of the Basque people in northern Spain and southern France has puzzled anthropologists for decades.<\/p>\n

One theory proposed that they were an unmixed pocket of indigenous hunters.<\/p>\n

Now, a study in PNAS<\/em> journal<\/a> suggests they descend from early farmers who mixed with local hunters before becoming isolated for millennia.<\/p>\n

The Basques have unique customs and a language – Euskera – that is unrelated to any other spoken in Europe, or indeed the world.<\/p>\n

Nestled in a mountainous corner of Atlantic Europe, they also show distinct genetic patterns to their neighbours in France and Spain.<\/p>\n

It seemed logical that they were representatives of an older layer of population settlement, but just how far back their roots went has been a topic of debate.<\/p>\n

Mattias Jakobsson from Uppsala University in Sweden analysed the genomes of eight Stone Age human skeletons from El Portal\u00f3n in Atapuerca, northern Spain.<\/p>\n

These individuals lived between 3,500 and 5,500 years ago, after the transition to farming in southwest Europe.<\/p>\n

The results show that these early Iberian farmers are the closest ancestors to present-day Basques.
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Comparisons with other ancient European farmers show that agriculture was brought to Iberia by the same migrant groups that introduced it to central and northern Europe. These pioneers expanded from a homeland in the Near East, sweeping across Europe about 7,000 years ago to usher in the period known as the Neolithic.<\/p>\n

Once the farmers settled down, they mixed with local hunter-gatherers – the descendants of people who lived in Europe during the last Ice Age.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the El Portal\u00f3n individuals had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than pioneer farmers from Germany, Hungary and Spain who lived several thousand years earlier.<\/p>\n

The new study also goes some way to explaining some of the differences between the Basques and their neighbours in France and Spain.<\/p>\n

After the initial farmer-hunter mixture was set, the ancestors of the Basques became isolated from surrounding groups – perhaps due to a combination of geography and culture.<\/p>\n

“It’s hard to speculate, but we’ve been working with Basque historians and it’s clear from the historical record that this area was very difficult to conquer,” Prof Jakobsson told BBC News.<\/p>\n

This means the Basque area was largely unaffected by subsequent migrations that shaped genetic patterns elsewhere in Europe.<\/p>\n

Migration and isolation<\/span><\/p>\n

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Map of Basque region<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

One of these movements occurred in the Bronze Age, when pastoralists from the Steppe – on the eastern periphery of the continent – travelled west en masse. This migration probably spread Indo-European languages across Europe, affecting the central and northern parts of the continent to a greater extent than the south.<\/p>\n

While the genomes of French and Spanish individuals showed evidence of this eastern genetic input, those of Basques did not.<\/p>\n

Another migration served to further differentiate Basques from their Spanish neighbours. In AD 711, a Muslim army crossed from North Africa into Iberia, beginning an occupation that lasted more than 700 years.<\/p>\n

Again, while a small amount of North African and Sub-Saharan ancestry can be detected in the Spanish, it is largely absent from the Basques.<\/p>\n

Previous studies have shown that people native to the Italian island of Sardinia are most genetically similar to the pioneer farmers of central Europe.<\/p>\n

The Sardinians also became isolated after the agricultural transition, but they lack the additional hunter-gatherer ancestry that characterises the Basques.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, while archaeology shows that Europe’s earliest farmers hailed from the Near East, populations living in that region today do not particularly resemble them genetically.<\/p>\n

This is because genetic patterns in Turkey and the Middle East were re-shaped by migrations from surrounding areas after the Early Neolithic.<\/p>\n

The proportion of hunter-gatherer ancestry varies across Europe, peaking at about 30% in Estonians and Lithuanians, but no “pure” indigenous Europeans remain. They appear to have been assimilated by the Neolithic migrants, who probably had greater numbers.<\/p>\n

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\nhttp:\/\/www.sott.net\/article\/301357-Basque-origins-mystery-solved-by-ancient-DNA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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