# Population Genetics > Autosomal Genetics >  Regional Iberian data (From Dienekes' Blog)

## Knovas

Here is the article: http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/12...0-genomes.html

*First assessment of 1000 Genomes Iberian Spanish (IBS) sub-populations*

As promised, I have taken the IBS sample from the latest available 1000 Genomes data and split it into sub-populations. There are at present 147 IBS individuals, and 108 of them have regional information about them:

Canarias_1KG 2Galicia_1KG 8Aragon_1KG 6Valencia_1KG 12Andalucia_1KG 4Murcia_1KG 8Baleares_1KG 7Cataluna_1KG 9Pais_Vasco_1KG 8Cantabria_1KG 6Extremadura_1KG 8Castilla_La_Mancha_1KG 6Castilla_Y_Leon_1KG 12
I estimated the admixture proportions of these individuals in terms of the K12a calculator. I do not report averages at this time, as I will repeat the analysis that created K12a, but using new reference individuals from the 1000 Genomes project. Nonetheless, the following figure of the ADMIXTURE analysis gives a visual taste of the makeup of the different populations:

_12.jpg

The one population that stands out in this set is that of the Basque Country (Pais_Vasco_1KG) which appears, like the HGDP French_Basque population to differ from its neighbors in having near zero of the "Caucasus" component.

I first speculated that some of the IBS sample were of Basque origin during the summer, and it seems that this was indeed the case.

The paucity of the "Caucasus" component in Dodecad, HGDP, and now 1000 Genomes Basques, together with the paucity of the "Caucasus"/"Gedrosia" components in Finns compared to northern Balto-Slavs and Scandinavians respectively is very suggestive, since these are the two major non-Indo-European speaking populations of Europe. (*)

In my opinion, these comparisons add weight to the growing body of evidence that the PIE Urheimat is to be sought in the territory of West Asia, as a secondary movement, about 8,000 years, ago of the broader series of expansions that began from this area 12,000 years ago.

(*) Hungarians are also non-Indo-European, but they seem to have received their language in historical times through a process of elite dominance. 

- Well, It's a good beggining to start creating subgroups as more samples come. The graphics use the K12a model as pointed above, which has been discussed in the appropriate thread: http://www.eupedia.com/forum/showthr...ure-calculator

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## Carlos

It's all about the same. In the Basque case I think the results are addressed beforehand. Imagine that the Basque language would not have survived until today and have created many myths about him, the results may not appear always try a little different than the rest, it's like you have to justify it. I advise you to break free from myths and in the Basque case seeking release and not scrutinize a somewhat different.

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## Knovas

¿You advise me? Just to avoid confusions I'd like to point: 

- First of all, the data is not mine, it comes from Dodecad/Dienekes'. No myths emanating from me, and it's not rare they appear quite different from the average Spaniards...many other analysis support what you see here, so It's not casual.

- Second: I can assure you this Basques differ substantiallly from the 24 HGDP French Basques, 100% sure due to Castilian ancestry (recent or not, we cannot know). Then, it rather shows that actual Basques are not all the same, and some cline between different areas is perfectly noticeable. In another thread, there was a study showing variation from Navarra to Álava, being the last ones the most different from the average. Even the Northern Navarrese come out as Basque as Guipuzkoans, while people from Álava deviated towards main Spaniards. Wilhelm knows what I'm talking about.

- Third: Me, being almost fully Catalan and without knowing how to speak Basque, using the same pattern, I come out very similar to this 8 Basque samples. We could say I'm in the middle of this Catalans, Cantabrians, Valencians, and Argonese in one side, and this Basques in the other. There's no reason to think Dienekes' has an agenda to show me deviating towards them, implying an apreciable difference from the main Spaniards. Simply, it's what it is using the present system, which I admited in the other thread reports strange things though, but the difference between Iberians is the same as usual.

- Sumary: Basques (or people with substantial Basque ancestry) are genetically different, is what all analysis show and this one only confirms what it's known. If you don't want to believe it, well, you are free to do so of course, but the facts won't change.

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## razor

You are very knowledgeable about this issue I'm not too bad in other disciplines, but still an infant in genetics. Could you remind me how Basque genetic distinctiveness correlates with their sharing a similar Y-DNA profile with other Westerners? This was discussed somewhere else but I forget the details. Does it correspond to Dienekes' latest data?

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## Knovas

Hi razor,

Yes, this has been discused is several threads. We must keep in mind that usually haplogroup frequencies don't match the autosomes, however, this analysis are quite different from anything seen before and it's too early to take concrete conclusions.

The main reason why Basques appear isolated is due to suffering from a lack of outbreeding, and they team up apart more or less as if we pick a bunch of cousins. At least, this does not necessarily imply they must get different reports on admixture, but the fact is they do, coming out largely more European than the average population (doesn't matter if Iberian or from other parts of Europe). Of course, the same is valid for Sardinians, but they are less regular in their admixture proportions.

I assume you wonder about the incredibly high R1b they show, quite similar for example to some British populations and the Irish. I personally can tell you as said in other threads here that, no, there's no significant correlation in having similar R1b % between those populations, and the same is valid for Catalans if you check the table. On admixture analysis all of them show different results, what suggest that R1b is fairly recent in Europe, hence, between the Basques. At some point, there was a massive migration into Europe replacing most of the Mesolithic and Neolithic linages, and surely with an autosomal repercussion too, but not enough huge to make populations look "the same" as the haplogroup frequencies could suggest.

At least, this is the sumary of the general point of view here, based on a bronze age irruption for R1b. Is what makes more sense to understand the apreciable differences between populations.

I hope this is helpful for you, althought other forumers can possibly explain it better than me. Be sure that if I forgot something important they'll gonna say it ;)

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## razor

> Hi razor,
> 
> 
> I assume you wonder about the incredibly high R1b they show, quite similar for example to some British populations and the Irish. I personally can tell you as said in other threads here that, no, there's no significant correlation in having similar R1b % between those populations, and the same is valid for Catalans if you check the table. On admixture analysis all of them show different results, what suggest that R1b is fairly recent in Europe, hence, between the Basques. At some point, there was a massive migration into Europe replacing most of the Mesolithic and Neolithic linages, and surely with an autosomal repercussion too, but not enough huge to make populations look "the same" as the haplogroup frequencies could suggest.
> 
> At least, this is the sumary of the general point of view here, based on a bronze age irruption for R1b. Is what makes more sense to understand the apreciable differences between populations.


Your point about the lack of correlation between autosomal and Y-DNA results is quite helpful. What I don't understand is how such a massive lineage replacement (accompanied doubtless by an IE language shift) had no impact on the Basque language. I find this quite incredible. Unless one assumes that the proto-Basque speakers were also a part of the invasion, and that the incoming polyphonous R1b was itself "in process" so to speak of being Indo-Europeanized.

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## Knovas

It's not easy to know exactly how things happened. I think it's not incredibly dificult to believe that the new comers simply integrated, although sometimes I read something about Celtic vocabulary in the Basque language, but if it's true we must take it as a minor influence...nothing significant I think. I'm not much versed on linguistics to say reliable things about this though.

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## Taranis

> It's not easy to know exactly how things happened. I think it's not incredibly dificult to believe that the new comers simply integrated, although sometimes I read something about Celtic vocabulary in the Basque language, but if it's true we must take it as a minor influence...nothing significant I think. I'm not much versed on linguistics to say reliable things about this though.


You are correct, the number of Celtic loanwords is very small. I posted a list of known Celtic loanwords into Basque here.

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## Knovas

Thanks Taranis. Yes, very small, I think it would help to have a Basque forumer here with your knowledge on linguistics, and surely something more could come out.

Also, the thread linked it's very useful if you want to know more, razor.

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## Wilhelm

> You are correct, the number of Celtic loanwords is very small. I posted a list of known Celtic loanwords into Basque here.


But there is Celtic topnymia in Basque lands. Or at least Indo-european (non-latin)

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## Taranis

> Thanks Taranis. Yes, very small, I think it would help to have a Basque forumer here with your knowledge on linguistics, and surely something more could come out.
> 
> Also, the thread linked it's very useful if you want to know more, razor.


You're welcome. I actually took most of these out of an etymological dictionary for the Basque language (by the late vascologist R. L. Trask). I'm not sure the list is exhausted, but I am pretty certain that the number of Basque loanwords from Celtic is indeed that small it's unlikely that there's much more Basque words for which Celtic etymologies can be found.




> But there is Celtic topnymia in Basque lands. Or at least Indo-european (non-latin)


Yes, I also elaborated on that. It's mostly in the west of the modern-day Basque country, due to the fact that the Basques lived more eastwards and northwards in Antiquity. The list above regards the actual _Basque vocabulary_, and as you can see, the number of Celtic loanwords is rather small.

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## razor

> Thanks Taranis. Yes, very small, I think it would help to have a Basque forumer here with your knowledge on linguistics, and surely something more could come out.
> 
> Also, the thread linked it's very useful if you want to know more, razor.


I'm always somewhat suspicious of ad hoc theories which rely on a petitio principii. But if one assumes (for the sake of argument) that there indeed was some massive IE invasion into Western Europe sometime in the 3rd millennium BCE (the details of whence need not concern us here. We have some idea of the timeline for the emergence of L-312), then just possibly some variant of the much later Bulgarian saga (mutatis mutandis) might work. Perhaps a large group of IE warriors (not necessarily proto-Celtic) irrupted into the proto-Basque area, did their thing, established dominance, and then, in order to resist pressure from other similar groups, "integrated" as you say with the locals, spreading their Y-DNA through their political position, but progressively adopting the local language. Just as the Bulgarians adopted Slavonic. What do you think?

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## Knovas

I think it's very well explained, and perfectly possible as other options are. However, we just can make aproximations knowing the autosomal results (very characteristic and largely European) and that the language is almost entirely non IE.

We must stay with this facts and reasonable speculations for the moment. It's not an easy puzzle to solve.

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## Wilhelm

> - Second: I can assure you this Basques differ substantiallly from the 24 HGDP French Basques, 100% sure due to Castilian ancestry (recent or not, we cannot know). Then, it rather shows that actual Basques are not all the same, and some cline between different areas is perfectly noticeable. In another thread, there was a study showing variation from Navarra to Álava, being the last ones the most different from the average. Even the Northern Navarrese come out as Basque as Guipuzkoans, while people from Álava deviated towards main Spaniards. Wilhelm knows what I'm talking about.


Yes, that's correct. Here is the study :

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## Taranis

> I think it's very well explained, and perfectly possible as other options are. However, we just can make aproximations knowing the autosomal results (very characteristic and largely European) and that the language is almost entirely non IE.
> 
> We must stay with this facts and reasonable speculations for the moment. It's not an easy puzzle to solve.


The problem is, if we argue for the idea that the Basques are _not_ native to the Iberian penninsula or to Western Europe, we have a very large problem: apart from the extinct Iberian language (a theory which in itself disputed and which is also found on the Iberian penninsula), there is no uncontested relationship with the language. If the Basques immigrated from somewhere else during the Copper Age (or later), we would expect a firm relationship with other language families (most often proposed are one of the Caucasian language families). We obviously do not know how long it takes for two languages to be completely dissimilar from each other, but if we take the larger, well established language families (Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Uralic), one must assume that it must be at least go back to the Neolithic.

Furthermore Basque language has "native" (that is, non-IE) vocabulary for agriculture, domesticated animals (including the horse!) and for metal-working, which in my opinion makes it very unlikely that there were already Indo-Europeans in Iberia during the copper age - otherwise we would see IE loanwords for metal-working. My opinion is it that the Basques are indeed native, and didn't come into contact with Indo-Europeans (specifically, with Celtic-speaking peoples) until the Bronze Age, perhaps even as late as the early Iron Age.

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## Knovas

Thanks for sharing this Taranis, it makes a lot of sense and must be taken seriously.

Thanks also Wilhelm, it's very ilustrative. I think the 8 Basques from the IBS could be quite similar to the Vizcayans and some others from Álava listed there in regards for admixture proportions.

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## Wilhelm

Taranis, the european origin of Basques is unquestionable. They are autosomally one of the most european populations, and their profile is typically Western/Atlantic and Southwestern, the most similar people being Spaniards. Also, the Caucasus theory is nonsense, given than Basques have one of the lowest of the caucasus ancestral components in Europe, if not the lowest, in this last K12a run they have 0% caucasus.

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## Knovas

Genetically speaking is absolutely clear, but the origins of their language is a very complex issue. It could be incredibly Paleolithic though, but this is a lot of time and many things happen...

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## Taranis

> Taranis, the european origin of Basques is unquestionable. They are autosomally one of the most european populations, and their profile is typically Western/Atlantic and Southwestern, the most similar people being Spaniards. Also, the Caucasus theory is nonsense, given than Basques have one of the lowest of the caucasus ancestral components in Europe, if not the lowest, in this last K12a run they have 0% caucasus.


Yes, I also think that the rarity of Caucasian components is a forceful argument against a relationship between the Basques and any one of the Caucasian peoples.




> Genetically speaking is absolutely clear, but the origins of their language is a very complex issue. It could be incredibly Paleolithic though, but this is a lot of time and many things happen...


I'm not sure if Basque is really a Paleolithic or Mesolithic language, since it's ultimately virtually impossible to test it. It is clear that _if_ the Basque language is Mesolithic or older, the agricultural and pastoralist terms in Basque must be loanwords.

For a comparison, the core vocabulary of the Uralic languages is that of a hunter-gatherer society. That does necessarily not mean that the Uralic languages are really Mesolithic, because if we take a look at the Comb Ceramic Culture, which is one of the best candidates for Proto-Uralic speakers, we are talking about a culture of pottery-using hunter-gatherers that were contemporaries of the European Neolithic.

From that perspective, the question wether Basque is Neolithic or older is impossible to answer.

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## Asturrulumbo

> I'm not sure if Basque is really a Paleolithic or Mesolithic language, since it's ultimately virtually impossible to test it. It is clear that _if_ the Basque language is Mesolithic or older, the agricultural and pastoralist terms in Basque must be loanwords.
> 
> For a comparison, the core vocabulary of the Uralic languages is that of a hunter-gatherer society. That does necessarily not mean that the Uralic languages are really Mesolithic, because if we take a look at the Comb Ceramic Culture, which is one of the best candidates for Proto-Uralic speakers, we are talking about a culture of pottery-using hunter-gatherers that were contemporaries of the European Neolithic.
> 
> From that perspective, the question wether Basque is Neolithic or older is impossible to answer.


By any chance, are the Basque agricultural terms related to the Iberian ones? Or are they internally reconstructible from other earlier vocabulary?

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## Taranis

> By any chance, are the Basque agricultural terms related to the Iberian ones? Or are they internally reconstructible from other earlier vocabulary?


On the first question, it is not known. The problem is that Iberian is as of currently still a largely undeciphered language (even though the script isn't), and a vast part of the language remains unknown. Common Basque-Iberian words clearly exist (for example Iberian "ili-" and Basque "hiri" - both meaning town/city), but it's as of now uncertain if these are Basque loans into Iberian, Iberian loans into Basque, or common words because Basque and Iberian belong into the same language family.

For the second, R. L. Trask (with a necessary dosis of disbelief!) suggested that a number of words for tools such as aiztur (shears) and aizto (knife) may be derived from the Basque word '(h)aitz' (stone). But, how likely is it for explicitly shears and knife to be derived from the word for "stone"?

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## spongetaro

> For the second, R. L. Trask (with a necessary dosis of disbelief!) suggested that a number of words for tools such as aiztur (shears) and aizto (knife) may be derived from the Basque word '(h)aitz' (stone). But, how likely is it for explicitly shears and knife to be derived from the word for "stone"?


What if aizto was related to a very archaic form of knife made in stone (silex blade)? If that was the case that would relates Basque to a pre-Neolithic language.

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## Asturrulumbo

> On the first question, it is not known. The problem is that Iberian is as of currently still a largely undeciphered language (even though the script isn't), and a vast part of the language remains unknown. Common Basque-Iberian words clearly exist (for example Iberian "ili-" and Basque "hiri" - both meaning town/city), but it's as of now uncertain if these are Basque loans into Iberian, Iberian loans into Basque, or common words because Basque and Iberian belong into the same language family.
> 
> For the second, R. L. Trask (with a necessary dosis of disbelief!) suggested that a number of words for tools such as aiztur (shears) and aizto (knife) may be derived from the Basque word '(h)aitz' (stone). But, how likely is it for explicitly shears and knife to be derived from the word for "stone"?


Wasn't it claimed that Basque and Iberian numerals are cognate? Numerals would be one of the most probable terms a hunter-gatherer population would borrow from an agricultural one, in my opinion.

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## Carlos

I asked my mother about the origin of the Basque language, she it is not contaminated by any information on the subject.

He answered that language is not here (Spain) or the Iberians and from the north, north, far north.

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## Knovas

About this samples, Dienekes' says there is regional information available of 108 individuals, but only 96 are listed if I'm not wrong. That could mean the unknown 12 are of very mixed ancestry between regions, or he just forgot to include them and gonna do it when repeating the analysis with all samples.

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