The Basques (/bɑːsks/ BAHSKS or /bæsks/ BASKS; Basque: euskaldunak [eus̺kaldunak]; Spanish: vascos [ˈbaskos]; French: basques [bask]) are a Southwestern European ethnic group,[6][7][8] characterised by the Basque language, a common culture and shared genetic ancestry to the ancient Vascones and Aquitanians.[9][10][11] 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.[10]
The English word Basque may be pronounced /bɑːsk/ or /bæsk/ and derives from the French Basque (French: [bask]), itself derived from Gascon Basco (pronounced [ˈbasku]), cognate with Spanish Vasco (pronounced [ˈbasko]). Those, in turn, come from Latin Vascō (pronounced [ˈwaskoː]; plural Vascōnēs—see history section below). The Latin /w/ generally evolved into the bilabials /b/ and /β̞/ in Gascon and Spanish, probably under the influence of Basque and the related Aquitanian (the Latin /w/ instead evolved into /v/ in French, Italian and other Romance languages).
Several coins from the 2nd and the 1st centuries BC found in the Basque Country bear the inscription barscunes. The place in which they were minted is not certain but is thought to be somewhere near Pamplona, in the heartland of the area that historians believe was inhabited by the Vascones. Some scholars have suggested a Celtic etymology based on bhar-s-, meaning "summit", "point" or "leaves", according to which barscunes may have meant "the mountain people", "the tall ones" or "the proud ones", and others have posited a relationship to a Proto-Indo-European root *bar- meaning "border", "frontier", "march".[12]
In Basque, 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 Basque person, whether Basque-speaking or not. Alfonso Irigoyen posits that the word euskara is derived from an ancient Basque verb enautsi "to say" (compare modern Basque esan) and the suffix -(k)ara ("way (of doing something)"). Thus, euskara would mean literally "way of saying" or "way of speaking". One item of evidence in favour of that hypothesis is found in the Spanish book Compendio Historial, written in 1571 by the Basque writer Esteban de Garibay. He records the name of the Basque language as enusquera. That may, however, be a writing mistake.
In the 19th century, the Basque nationalist activist Sabino Arana posited an original root euzko, which he thought came from eguzkiko ("of the sun", related to the assumption of an original solar religion). On the basis of that putative root, Arana proposed the name Euzkadi for an independent Basque nation, composed of seven Basque historical territories. Arana's neologism Euzkadi (in the regularized spelling Euskadi) is still widely used in both Basque and Spanish since it is now the official name of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.[13]
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 misleading view that Basques are "living fossils" of the earliest modern humans who colonised Europe.[14] Partly for these reasons, anthropological and genetic studies from the beginning and the end of the 20th century theorized that the Basques are the descendants of the original Cro-Magnons.[15][16]
But although they are genetically distinctive in some ways due to isolation, the Basques are still very typically European in their Y-DNA and mtDNA sequences, and in some other genetic loci. These same sequences are widespread throughout the Western half of Europe, especially along the Western fringe of the continent.[17][18]
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, a 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.[17][19]
Studies of the Y-DNA haplogroups 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-DF27[14][20] (70 % according to some[21]). This had initially been theorised to be a Palaeolithic marker.[22][17]: p. 1365 (Table 3) But this theory encountered inconsistencies even prior to the most recent chronological re-evaluations.[14][23] More recent studies suggest that R1b spread up to Western Europe from southwestern Eurasia in the Neolithic period or later, between 8,000 and 4,000 years ago.[24][25][26][27] The age of the subclade which Basques carry, R1b-DF27, "is estimated at ~4,200 years ago, at the transition between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, when the Y chromosome landscape of Western Europe was thoroughly remodeled. In spite of its high frequency in Basques, Y-STR internal diversity of R1b-DF27 is lower there, and results in more recent age estimates", implying it was brought to the region from elsewhere.[21] Next to the main lineage R1b, high frequencies of E-V65, associated with the Maghreb, Italy and Spain, were found among Basque autochthonous inhabitants of Álava province (17.3 %), Biscay province (10.9 %), and Gipuzkoa province (3.3 %).[28]
Several ancient DNA samples have been recovered and amplified from the Iberian and Basque region. The collection of mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups sampled there differed significantly compared to their modern frequencies. The authors concluded that there is "discontinuity" between ancient locals and modern Basques.[29] While Basques harbour some very archaic mtDNA lineages,[30][31] they are not of "undiluted Palaeolithic ancestry" but of significantly early Neolithic origin with a connection to the isolate Sardinian people.[9] It appears that some 4,500 years ago almost all Y-DNA heritage from Iberian admixture of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers was replaced by the R1b lineage of herders from the steppe,[32][33] and the Basque genetic distinctiveness is a result of centuries of low population size, genetic drift, and endogamy.[11]
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 Mesolithic hunters before becoming genetically isolated from the rest of Europe for millennia.[34] 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.[35] The findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.[9] According to the study, the "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." Still these early Neolithic farmer ancestors of the Basques did mix with local southwestern hunter-gatherers, and "the proportion of hunter gatherer-related admixture into early farmers also increased over the course of two millennia." This admixed group was also found to be ancestral to other modern-day Iberian peoples, but while the Basques remained relatively isolated for millennia after this time, later migrations into Iberia led to distinct and additional admixture in all other Iberian groups.[36]
In 2019, a study was published in Science in which a more modern time-transect of Iberian ancient populations including the Basque were analyzed. From their abstract, it says: "and we reveal that present-day Basques are best described as a typical Iron Age population without the admixture events that later affected the rest of Iberia." This indicates Basques were isolated from admixture with outside groups since at least 1000 BC, or 3000 years before the present. In Iberia, these later admixture (interbreeding) events were with central European (Celtic), eastern Mediterranean (Phoenician, Greek and Roman), northern African (Carthaginian and Mauritanian) and northern European (Gothic and Frankish) populations, and genomic ancestry from them are found in varying degrees in all or most present-day Iberian populations, except – albeit to a limited extent even there – for the Basque.[10]
Basque tribes were mentioned in Roman times by Strabo and Pliny, including the Vascones, 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 (see: Aquitanian language).
In the Early Middle Ages, the territory between the Ebro and Garonne rivers was known as Vasconia, a vaguely defined ethnic area and political entity struggling to fend off pressure from the Iberian Visigothic kingdom and Arab rule to the south, as well as the Frankish push from the north.[37][38] 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, Ribagorça (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 subject 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. However, in January 2017, a single agglomeration community was established for the Basque Country in France.[39]
The Basque region is divided into at least three administrative units, namely the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre in Spain, and the arrondissement of Bayonne and the cantons of Mauléon-Licharre and Tardets-Sorholus in the département of Pyrénées Atlantiques, France.
The autonomous community (a concept established in the Spanish Constitution of 1978) known as Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoa or EAE in Basque and as Comunidad Autónoma Vasca or CAV in Spanish (in English: Basque Autonomous Community or BAC),[40] is made up of the three Spanish provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa. The corresponding Basque names of these territories are Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, and their Spanish names are Álava, Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa.
The BAC only includes three of the seven provinces of the currently called historical territories. It is sometimes referred to simply as "the Basque Country" (or Euskadi) by writers and public agencies only considering those three western provinces, but also on occasions merely as a convenient abbreviation when this does not lead to confusion in the context. Others reject this usage as inaccurate and are careful to specify the BAC (or an equivalent expression such as "the three provinces", up to 1978 referred to as "Provincias Vascongadas" in Spanish) when referring to this entity or region. Likewise, terms such as "the Basque Government" for "the government of the BAC" are commonly though not universally employed. In particular in common usage the French term Pays Basque ("Basque Country"), in the absence of further qualification, refers either to the whole Basque Country ("Euskal Herria" in Basque), or not infrequently to the northern (or "French") Basque Country specifically.
Under Spain's present constitution, Navarre (Nafarroa in present-day Basque, Navarra historically in Spanish) constitutes a separate entity, called in present-day Basque Nafarroako Foru Erkidegoa, in Spanish Comunidad Foral de Navarra (the autonomous community of Navarre). The government of this autonomous community is the Government of Navarre. In historical contexts Navarre may refer to a wider area, and that the present-day northern Basque province of Lower Navarre may also be referred to as (part of) Nafarroa, while the term "High Navarre" (Nafarroa Garaia in Basque, Alta Navarra in Spanish) is also encountered as a way of referring to the territory of the present-day autonomous community.
There are three other historic provinces parts of the Basque Country: Labourd, Lower Navarre and Soule (Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea and Zuberoa in Basque; Labourd, Basse-Navarre and Soule in French), devoid of official status within France's present-day political and administrative territorial organization, and only minor political support to the Basque nationalists. A large number of regional and local nationalist and non-nationalist representatives have waged a campaign for years advocating for the creation of a separate Basque département, while these demands have gone unheard by the French administration.
There are 2,123,000 people living in the Basque Autonomous Community (279,000 in Alava, 1,160,000 in Biscay and 684,000 in Gipuzkoa). The most important cities in this region, which serve as the provinces' administrative centers, are Bilbao (in Biscay), San Sebastián (in Gipuzkoa), and Vitoria-Gasteiz (in Álava). The official languages are Basque and Spanish. Knowledge of Spanish is compulsory under the Spanish constitution (article no. 3), and knowledge and usage of Basque is a right under the Statute of Autonomy (article no. 6), so only knowledge of Spanish is virtually universal. Knowledge of Basque, after declining for many years during Franco's dictatorship owing to official persecution, is again on the rise due to favorable official language policies and popular support. Currently about 33 percent of the population in the Basque Autonomous Community speaks Basque.
Navarre has a population of 601,000; its administrative capital and main city, also regarded by many nationalist Basques as the Basques' historical capital, is Pamplona (Iruñea in modern Basque). Only Spanish is an official language of Navarre, and the Basque language is only co-official in the province's northern region, where most Basque-speaking Navarrese are concentrated.
About a quarter of a million people live in the French Basque Country. Nowadays Basque-speakers refer to this region as Iparralde (Basque for North), and to the Spanish provinces as Hegoalde (South). Much of this p