The Magnificent Vascons
The Magnificent Vascons
Michel Begon April 2003
representation that Europe likes to give his story is soothing, certainly epic, but probably false. We are told that the Gauls inhabited the Gaul and Belgium in the 6th century BC, there encountering wild as unworthy of interest, and there developed a brilliant civilization, and then they were conquered by the Romans, whose Latin supplanted the Celtic dialects, both Roman and Celtic peoples merged all lovingly embracing Christianity, as preached by Saint Denis 250; at 5th century Germanic invaders poured yet, which gave their name to France (regnum Francorum: Kingdom of the Franks), but they soon became converts to the religion and the language of the Gallo-Roman and finally that these three stands Celtic, Roman and Germanic, was born the modern-day France. And if this was a pious legend?
In recent years, observation techniques of population genetics have made significant progress, taking some markers characteristic mutations of human genes by examining the demographic distribution of genomes identified by these markers and monitoring their progression or, conversely, their decline in space and time, thanks to the biological analysis of indigenous peoples. We know now identify ethnic groups by their genetic markers and identify their geographical shifts, even old, from the genome of their descendants remained.
However, this population genetics has provided a major breakthrough and was not expected is that the area distribution of a given genotype substantially covers the area of dissemination of such language spoken. At the same place and at the same time, there is a coincidence of an ethnic group with a language group, and so there was resistance of each population group against foreign invasions, so that the mixtures were ethnic less widespread than was previously believed. Genotype and language, could we add the specific customs and particularism of religions?
Anyway, we have acquired a powerful means of objective observation of the distant past, which allows us to trace back the history until 50,000 years before the Christian era, even in the absence of records.
Oh surprise, the legend of a Europe Gallo-Roman and Germanic sees it crumbled. And old speculation about the past History Vascons are thereby not only confirmed, but expanded and clarified.
1. Oral tradition or written
probably was known, from the Latin authors own admission, that the Gallo-Roman settlement had scarcely penetrated south of the Garonne or, more generally, in the Pyrenees, with the exception of Lugdunum glorious Convenarum (Saint Bertrand de Comminges), Eauze (capital of Elusates and Novempopulania) or Consoranum Lugdunum (Saint Lizier). The etymology Celtic expression "Lugdunum", meaning fortress (dunums), dedicated to the god "Lug" (the god of armed force), would also believe that they were strongholds in hostile land.
For a nation prior to the Gauls their very opposite was the most stubborn resistance. The Latin writers called him the people of the "Basques" and Sallust, Caesar, Pliny and Juvenal, and Paulinus of Nola in 430 described the Pyrenees "Vascons saltus", ie massive mountain of Basques. These people then Basques shared between the cadets, who adopted the Romance dialects, and the Basques, whose ancient language persists to this day.
Unlike the Celts, Romans, Germans and even the Normans, it was people outside the Indo-European civilization and of which, by the same originality, language , customs, religious traditions seemed to be ancient to modern particularly strange. Already, the Greek geographer Strabo was pleased to report that the Basques people spent every night of the full moon to dance in honor of his local god. Voltaire echoed "The Basque country is the little people dancing in the Pyrenees! In fact, the ceremonial dance of the Basques is Aurresku, accompanying ceremonies and including the planting of the sacred tree. But many other Basque traditions continue to surprise us: Basque pelota, human pyramids, the beret, basque drum, etc.. , Besides the language itself, "Euskara". Unlike feudal France, it seems that the Basques have never been honored by the nobility or serfdom, but retained their democratic assemblies and custom written, known in English the Catholic Monarchs.
soon the Romans conquered the 6th century, the province of Novempopulania (ie the region of nine people) said the name Vasconia, whence comes the name of Biscay.
In the 9th century AD, all of Biscay, including Comminges and County of Foix, Ariege, therefore all present, spoke Basques, ancestor of modern Basque. However, this oral tongue remained, since Latin was the written language of western Europe, it was divided among several dialects, each own at such or that valley in the Pyrenees, the first book published in Basque was not prior to 1545, and it is only in the 20th century that linguists have managed to unify and codify Euskara. Without doubt, this delay to be a language of written culture he caused the gradual decline of the Basque language to oc and oil, derived from Latin.
Vascons These medieval Christians only were they? Nothing is less certain, since the Chanson de Roland, composed in the 11th century in Normandy, they blamed the killing of one or several armies of Charlemagne and confused with Muslims. And because also, throughout the Middle Ages, pilgrims of Saint Jacques de Compostela terror had crossed the Basque Country, between Mont de Marsan and Bilbao, and he preferred as the safest way to bypass by Burgos and Astorga . Had they been Christians, the Basques would not opposed to Christianity as a whole! Both the Lateran Council in 1179 he excommunicated the Basque people as a whole on the grounds that he assaulted the pilgrims of Saint Jacques. Moreover, there were no famous abbey in the Basque country.
In fact, the conversion of Basque contemporary Christian faith seems recent and unequivocal. Their loyalty to ancestral rituals, including the worship of trees, remains evident. The king of Asturias was sworn in the sacred oak of Guernica in Vizcaya. In 1512 Isabella and Ferdinand of Aragon had to be sworn before the same oak of Guernica, to comply with "historic rights" Basque. Holy Week is not the same luster in Spain and most famous festival in Pamplona is the 'bull run', the bull run in the city. The city of San Sebastian Guipúzcoa even took the name of Donostia, by infidelity the Roman officer martyred under Doclétien. Symbolically, the "breach of Roland," which cuts into the circus of Gavarnie, could well be a signal to the Pyrenees infamy rebels to Christ!
It is true that in modern times, religious practice appears strong in the Basque country. But is that administrative, judicial and university in France as in Spain prohibited the use of Basque and only the local Catholic clergy, defended the language by using it to the catechism and liturgy. This dual membership in the Church and Euzkadi does the term "Eskualduna fededun, Basque and believer. Moreover, the Basques saw the Spaniards as bad Catholics, at least sign their respective faiths differ.
The desire for independence ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious Gascons manifested by the facts known and which could not be explained without it. After the failure of the Gauls, Romans and Germanic tribes, the Arab conquest of Spain, too, stumbled over the obstacle Basque, which has always remained disobedient. Then, the Crusade against the Muslims is part of the Pyrenees. In 1035, the King of Navarre, Sancho III the Great called himself "Rex Iberorum" (king of the Iberians) and the seven kings of Navarre, the 10th and 11th centuries, Sancho Sancho I to VII, were the promoters of the reconquest, until the Benedictine order of Cluny the deposed this role, perhaps because of their dubious Christian piety.
resistant grip very Catholic Burgundians, Gascony was given to the British by the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 and embraced Protestantism at the instigation of the kings of Navarre the house of Albret, but without conviction, since in 1620 the Pyrenean Protestantism has virtually disappeared except the exception of some islands in the county of Foix.
Although it was 1512 when annexed by the English crown, the Basque country has never ceased to oppose the fiercest resistance. The Carlist wars of the 19th century the Basques mobilized against the constitutional monarchy in Madrid. The Republic was forced to grant them autonomy. Then, the insurrection of Oviedo in 1934 marked the prelude to civil war and the Biscay Dolores Ibarruri was, under the name of the Pasionaria, the soul of the resistance to Franco's crusade.
Today, the war of independence of the Basques is a major fact of contemporary history.
2. Confusion with the Celts
The obstacle to the empirical recognition Basques was first interposition of the Celts or Gauls between the Neolithic and Roman colonization. Since the Middle Ages and until the 20th century, scholars attributed the megaliths without evidence and gave them to the Celts, to be true, names Celtic (dolmens, cairns, stone circles, menhirs, etc..), not without several millennia younger.
In reality, the Gauls have really dominated the inside and Gaul from the 6th century BC and lasted only Druidic religion of the 3rd century BC to 1st century AD, then same as the megaliths erected on the coasts of Western Europe are dated by archaeologists from the 6th to 3rd millennia BC.
The religion of the Druids Gaul was an Indo-European as the Greek and Roman religion. She honored the pantheon of deities Indo-European, which was Dumézil theory, the ideology of three functions. She practiced primarily human and animal sacrifices and divination.
The ritual of gathering mistletoe on the oaks in the fall is attested by only one author: Pliny the Elder (Natural History XIV, 95, 249), whose reliability is the most often questionable. Would not it mingled Basques and Druidic ceremonies?
On Religion
Basques, we know nothing, since no ancient author has indicated no. But presumably it was alien to Indo-European myths and may be akin to Chinese mythology, without known pantheon, before Buddhism and Taoism. Its most striking feature seems to be the worship of trees, also attested in Lithuania until the 13th century.
Still it was necessary to make their way to the Basques in history, while a scientific revolution, which we will say a few words, without hiding it unfortunately has many shortcomings.
3. The end of the Orientalist myth
The scientific theory of the phenomenon Basques has long been hampered by the belief, common among pre-historians, historians and linguists, that European civilization from the East and just east : agriculture, navigation, metallurgy, ceramics, alphabet, writing, counting, money, science, art, Bible, etc.. This belief in his absolutism is exaggerated if not false. Currently it remains rooted in Italian. But the Englishman Colin Renfrew lent him their hands, arguing that civilization was introduced in Europe, with agriculture, the immigration of Indo-Europeans from the Caucasus and Mesopotamia, from the 5th millennium BC era.
This orientalist thesis involved a contrario two premises that have not been verified first that the peoples of Europe were, before the arrival of Aryans, only hunters and gatherers more or less nomadic and barbarians devoid of any culture worthy of interest And secondly that the emergence of Indo-European was early enough that they were the authors of the famous megalithic civilization, the most ancient monuments are dated by the method of carbon 14, 5500 BCE. She resumed her account the tradition of racist contempt for the Romans cultivated the indigenous West, primarily the Basques, they considered barbarians among the barbarians. We know what job did National Socialism of the so-called Aryan supremacy! Ironically, the famous Swastika, aka the swastika, the emblem Hitler is both a badge Basques, who carved figure wood cabinets in Basque.
However, this thesis Orientalist has encountered three absolute impediment, at least, that refute: namely, first, that the megaliths appear prior to any Indo-European immigration from Asia, secondly, that some non-Indo-European civilizations of Europe, including the Minoan and Etruscan, were once sufficiently advanced to acculturate the Greeks or the Romans, who were against them the barbarians from the east; thirdly, that no evidence archaeological or semantic certifies the implementation of a any Indo-European people in Western Europe before the arrival of the Gauls between 1000 and 600 BCE.
Already in 1985, the historian Fernand Braudel put this myth into question, without make up still Vascons:
"In the western Atlantic, the Neolithic, regardless the origin (perhaps water), appears in an original context, with a special pottery or cardia or banded, and especially a great stone architecture, type megalithic monuments which have come down us. Prehistorians have long refused to attribute these grandiose constructions of "barbarian" peoples: they could not meet that "real" Civilization and therefore come from the east. Based on some similarities (especially with the tombs of the rotunda Minoan Crete), they envisioned a nation of experienced sailors, from the Aegean, carrying a "megalithic religion" they have posted along Atlantic coasts, starting with Spain in the mid 3rd millennium. And it's also at this late date that our ancestors laggards the Atlantic shores have finally learned the lessons of the Neolithic. Radiocarbon dates put up all these hypotheses. The oldest known megalithic monuments are Bretons and Portuguese - not English - and they predate any stone architecture of the eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt. "
Fernand Braudel - The identity of France - op.cit, Volume II, page 32
Then in the 1990s, Anglo-Saxon linguists Sapir, Cavalli-Sforza and others have disqualified this myth Orientalist which would imply a model diffusionist in preferring an evolutionary model and competitive Darwinian type. He argued that several autonomous civilizations could evolve in parallel and to share their innovations more profitable. Several startling discoveries came to support their thesis revolutionary
recognition of a new sui generis language group, which was called "Na-Dene", named after a native tribe of North America, but that seems to embrace the Chinese and the Basques, as reconciliations of etymological various languages concerned;
the identification of many place names of French territory, either as original Basques, either as Celtic, or as Latin or Germanic, or even as Norman, but without the appearance nowhere semantic traces of Indo-European people who have colonized our territory between the fifth millennium and the Gallic invasion of the 1st millennium;
continuity and density of the Neolithic people who practiced agriculture on our territory and megalithic monuments erected there, from the 6th millennium BC. It is the highest density of megaliths, not only in Britain and in the Rouergue, with the famous statues - menhirs Lacaune Mountains, but on the whole Atlantic coast, Andalusia in Jutland, but the interior of France be very concerned. This monumental density is not conceivable without a strong demographic pressure and without the practice of cereal agriculture. We can also assume that the Basques were already hardy sailors, who colonized the entire Atlantic coast and pitched it step by step their characteristic monuments;
detecting a genetic gradient, which affects the maximum current Basque population, and, gradually reducing to the east and south, shows minor influx of Indo-European population from Middle East. This is especially the Rhesus negative blood, which is present in 25% of Basques, but statistically decreases in concentric circles around an epicenter would Biarritz, to as little as 16% in frequency in England, only 5% in East Asia and disappear among the indigenous peoples of America or Australia. That, at least, the biological evidence that the Basques stand preceded all others in Europe, has not only gradually and partially mixed with the Indo-European and has not ceased to be the genetic substrate of Europe today.
4. The ethnic phenomenon
Besides morphology differs significantly from the Pyrenees physical appearance of the Gauls, or Romans. They were and still people are small, dark-skinned, high forehead, high cheekbones and slightly slanted eyes, reminding the Chinese of the north. Based on family photographs, my own great-grandmother, my great grandmother and my grandmother, when they were older, were like old Chinese. One of my cousins was at birth the famous Mongolian spot with age and takes the appearance of a Confucian sage.
The painter Pablo Picasso, Catalan by birth, has presented himself as the prototype of Iberia, southern variant of Vascon. Small in size, it had a dark complexion, prominent cheekbones and slanted eyes. Moreover, he celebrated the Basque resistance to Franco for his large painting "Guernica", representing the German bombing of 1937 on the holy city of the Basques, whose pagan rituals always arrange themselves around the oak guardian.
From the early 20th century, some linguists have argued that the language most obviously related to the Basque was the Han Chinese. They are agglutinative languages, poor vocabulary, where the spoken tone changes the meaning. Speaking Han n'ad'ailleurs unrelated to other Asian languages: it is therefore necessarily Europe. It seems he Dumézil, specialist Indo-European civilizations, who first felt the specific language group, now called the "Dene-Caucasian." However, genetics corroborates this conjecture!
Contemporary research shows the close correlation between genetic and linguistic specificities, in that the geographical locations of the highest frequency of such mutation may be benign, but significant overlap with the sites the highest density of use a corresponding language, at least before the mixing of migration in recent times.
This empirical finding is general territorial extension of such blood group overlaps with that of such idiom but without any causal link. A similar correlation confirms in the predictions of information theory, the genetic information of genome information and semiotics of talk obey the same statistical laws of evolution and differentiation.
However, this important group of non-Indo-European languages, significantly related, but scattered throughout the world, remained enigmatic after Dumezil reconciliations. Y were the dialects of the "na-dene" North American, including the Navajo or Apache, with those of Sino-Tibetan, Borouchos of northern Pakistan, the Iénisséiens, people of Siberia, Chechens and Caucasians Basques. It is always inflected languages, where suffixes and alterations play an important role in your net, but the syntax remains poor. However, their genetic relatedness was found with genotype. And besides, the physical resemblance of ethnic interested is marked by the height of the forehead, prominent cheekbones and bridle eye.
5. The epic Vascony
With the knowledge we have gained from the climatic history of the planet, it now seems possible to advance some cultural assumptions.
Life on Earth and human life are specifically related to genetic mutations, natural selection and changes in climate. Born of a mutation in the genome, datable thinks 200 is 000 years, homo sapiens sapiens would have eliminated its rival, the Neanderthals, here are some 36 000 years. Then came the so-called Würm glaciation, which affects 30 000 to 10 000 years before the Christian era, accumulating ice at the poles and the mountain, lowering the sea level of one hundred meters and cornering the exodus northern populations.
Presumably, ethnicity and language "Dene-Caucasian" scattered around this time, either from 30,000 BC. Some detachments won America and others invaded northern China, by equating the first occupants, and still others gained the Caucasus, and finally some walked to the Pyrenees, the softening influence of the Atlantic Ocean preserved in polar cold. In this geographical isolate, bordered to the north of the Loire by glaciers and tundra, the Basques survived by hunting and gathering, began to be domesticated herds of reindeer and especially developed a culture that is still admired.
For wall art the earliest and most aesthetic of their world seems to be due. Indeed, decorating and Chauvet caves Cosquer date of the Aurignacian, 30 000 BC, and is contemporaneous with the beginnings of the Würm glaciation, who drove the "dene" of Siberia. This lavish art continued until the end of the Ice Age, around 10,000 BC, the famed caves of Lascaux, Niaux, the Three Brothers, Enlène or Altamira. Thereafter, the Basques invented new styles of art such as painted pebbles of Mas d'Azil (Ariege).
However, the decline of the ice front allowed the Basques to colonize western Europe and perhaps North Africa to reduced from the Pyrenees, between 10 000 and 3000 years before our era. Both the Basque genotype, megaliths and Basques Basque names they find themselves on the entire coastline of Western Europe to Scandinavia. Falsely attributed to Celts, covered walkways, the alignments of Carnac and the sacred circle of Stonehenge would actually Basques. The Rhone seems to have separated civilizations and Vascony figure, since the megaliths are unknown to the East River.
Only between - 3000 and - 500 qu'affluèrent gradually from the Middle East peoples Indo-European, living on agriculture, practicing metallurgy, revering a pantheon uniform but without their characteristic genome excédât ever in Europe the proportion of 25%. In other words it was a small number of emigrants, who were lodged stepping into the spaces vacated by the Basques. Archaeological excavations show that the villages of the Neolithic period have survived in the same place until the Middle Ages to the present day and sometimes in the continuity of their traditions and their cemeteries. There was no bloody break. The Indo-European civilization did slowly imposed only for the benefit of writing and accounting, imported from the Middle East.
Repressed by degrees in languages, customs and religions Roman civilization Vascony came down, around the 1st century AD, to the southwest, then to the 10th century, the Biscay, finally, in the 21st century, only to Basque country in the Pyrenees.
6. Remanences language
The Anglo-Saxon historians now assume that the populations of Europe Western all the Basques spoke to the Celtic invasion, which only took place in Gaul until the year one thousand BC. This language was written, but with a particular alphabet, which was lost. Was found between Beziers and Murcia Iberian inscriptions, more than a thousand words, we do not know unfortunately not decipher, since language is not Vascony Indo-European.
The talk has significantly influenced the Basque speak Castilian, who gave the English. To designate the left side, the English no longer use the Latin "Siniestro", but the Basque word "izquierdo", meaning half of his hand. They pronounce the "f" as the Latin "h" Basque, which gives "hablar" rather than "parlar" or "hacer" rather than "facer" or "hijo" and not "Filio".
Many place names in France and Spain are Basque etymology. Thus the term Basque "ilimberri", meaning new town, gave Auch (Elimberrum) or Elne (Iliberri). The Basque word "aran 'valley, is reflected in the redundancy of the Val d'Aran", which mean " Val Val. This region has also retained as the Gascon language. Many names of rivers appear original Basques, for example, Garonne. All the place names of the current department of Ariege be to reconsider this.
The root ibar "means river in Basque. The name seems to come from the Ebro. And the surprising St. Ybars, found in many places, particularly in the Ariege valley Lèze, could well be that the avatar of an ancient river engineering.
Take the case of Le Mas d'Azil. The word oc "mas" comes from the Latin "mansio" place to stay. But Azil? We would like the Benedictine Abbey of the place, having given shelter to the pilgrims, was originally the name. However, the Basque term for "ZILO means hole. Can we believe that the vast hole in the cave of Mas would rather gave his name to the place?
*
short, genetic analysis can now be argued that 75% of modern French Basques have blood in their veins and the Indo-European invasions Celts, Romans, Germans and the Normans have left only 25% of genomes. It should no longer talk about "our ancestors the Gauls", but "our ancestors the Basques! Trying to extrapolate a bit from such a finding.
This discrepancy might be civilizations help explain the so-called "French exception". Indeed, if the French are not really traditional Indo-European or Celtic, or Latin, or Germanic, but rather culture Basques, while certain features that lend to the Basques may well characterize France as a whole: primarily, the worship of trees, dendrolâtrie. Presumably the pagan ritual of planting trees of liberty, which was revived in 1789 and renewed in 1848 and 2001. We must also remember that the architectural style, said to be wrong "Gothic" and is typically French, was to build buildings in the likeness of vast forests, with their pillars drums, ribbed vaults for their foliage, their as foliage tracery, pinnacles ending in their buds.
The profound significance of these traditions Basques, although buried under Christian education, but easily re-emerging, it would not help to understand why France has so rapidly de-Christianized, first from fifth to 10th centuries, and then again from the 16th century, rather than choosing between Catholicism and Protestantism? This is just a hypothesis adventurous course, but calling a priori attention.
Bibliography
Fernand Braudel "Identity of France," Arthaud - Flammarion 1986
Jacques Le Goff and René Rémond, "Religious History of France" - Threshold 1988
File "For Science" ( French translation of "Scientific American") from October 1997: "Languages of the World
" For Science "No. 299 of September 2002:" The Vascon first language of Europe and the epic Genome Basque
"For Science" No. 300 October 2002: "Anthropology and Genetics
" Archaeology "Occasional Paper No. 2000-2000:" The Druids "
Harriet Walter:" The Adventure of languages in West "- Robert Laffont 1994
Joseph Perez:" The history of Spain "- Fayard 1997
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie," History of France Regions - Threshold 2001
Encyclopedia Universalis
****
Summary chronology of the people Basques
Before Jesus Christ
- 30 000
Würm Glaciation
Dispersion "Dene-Caucasian" between China and the Caucasus
The Basques took refuge in the south-west France
- 30 000 (Aurignacian)
decorated caves of Chauvet and Cosquer
- 12 000 (Magdalenian)
Decorated Grottoes Niaux and Lascaux
- 10 000
End of the Würm glaciation
Penetration "Na-Dene" in North America
reconquest and repopulation of Western Europe by Vascons
- 7000 (Azilian)
painted pebbles of Mas d'Azil
- 5500 to - 3000
megalithic art, covered walkways, Carnac, Gavr'inis, Stonehenge
- 800
Scripture Iberian
- 600
Gallic Invasion
- 100
Roman Invasion
After Jesus Christ
500
The Vasconia becomes Gascony
700
Arab Invasion
800 Roncesvalles massacre by Vascons
900
Independence of Navarre
1000
The Iberians reconquer northern Spain
1179
Excommunication of Basques by the Lateran Council
13th century
Evangelization of Basques
1360
Treaty Bretigny: Basques and Gascons give English
1512
Annexation of Southern Navarre by Aragon
1540
Reform introduced by the house of Albret
1607
Annexation of northern Navarre to the throne of France
1895
Creation of the Nationalist Party Basque
1937
Massacre of Guernica
1973
Murder of Admiral Carrero Blanco
1973 to 2002
Basque Guerrilla against Spain
