2 thoughts on “The Relationship between Basque and Iberian: beyond the Numerals”

1. Since both populations descend from the same folk (the Bell Beaker Culture), it just makes sense that both languages were related.

   The question is if the BBC shifted to that non-IE language at the time of their formation.

2. In order to argue that a population may have switched to another language, we need some sort of compelling evidence for it. In the case of the Bell Beaker Culture (BBC) (understood as the population that descended from the CWC and that carried the male lineage R1b-L51) we don’t have any real evidence of strong interaction that may have taken place with some other culture in the area where this BBC population starts to expand from into Western Europe. That is, we need a SOURCE population (a Culture) somewhere around the Upper Danube region, towards the Rhine, that we know that existed at around 2700-2600 BC and interacted in a way that we can see by the means of the transfer of any cultural trait that we later find in the BBC in that area during the 2600-2500 BC period.

   So when you look at it, you realise that (to my knowledge) there was no culture in the required area at the required time with the required cultural traits. In fact, we hardly have any evidence of any population at all except for the indirect evidence of admixture that was not from the steppe that we do find in the BBC people (acquired via females exclusively). And while this last point is indeed evidence that some population still lived in the area, this only means that it was not completely depopulated by the time the BBC people arrived. However, it must have been so small that once the BBC people integrated some of their females into their own communities, that other population ceased to exist within that same generation or one more at best. And that population is not even known as a Culture in order to even see if any cultural trait was borrowed from them by the BBC.

   One argument is related to the fact that there was a population in the Tagus estuary (around Lisbon, Portugal) during that period of 2700-2600 BC that has also been traditionally called the BBC, even though they were completely unrelated to the one we’ve been referring to by that name above. The former was a local population that descended from the local Neolithic cultures of Iberia, while the later was a population that had just arrived to Central Europe from Eastern Europe (the earliest evidence from it that we have is from around 2900-2800 BC in Bohemia, as part of the CWC and being almost 100% genetically from the steppe). So the idea that there could have been a language transfer between local people from the Tagus estuary to the people from the Upper Danube during the period between 2700-2600 BC is completely out of the equation. This is simply an archaeological confusion from before we had ancient DNA that is now outdated and needs some urgent revision to CLEARLY separate both cultures with two different names (in this respect, I’d like to point out that a recent study about the “Spatiotemporal reconstruction of Corded Ware and Bell Beaker burial rituals reveals complex dynamics divergent from steppe ancestry“, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adx2262, has only contributed to the confusion by making wrong claims, specifically saying “By contrast, early BB burial rituals, with their distinct focus on archery equipment, copper artifacts such as tanged daggers, and the eponymous bell-shaped beaker, appear to have originated in populations with no steppe ancestry as observed previously (4)” where that (4) footnote links to Olalde et al. 2018, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25738, where there is no such early BB burials that contain copper daggers of populations with no steppe ancestry. The closest thing is one sample from Hungary, I2741, 2458–2154 calBCE, who indeed does not have steppe ancestry or a steppe male lineage, and is said to have a “dagger” among the grave goods. However, neither is it a particularly early burial, nor do we know the type of dagger, since flint daggers were used too. And he’s a very rare exception of a male with no steppe ancestry buried within a “steppe” community, along with 3 other males that are clearly of steppe ancestry.

   The subject of copper daggers is an interesting one. Copper daggers don’t really exist, since copper is too soft for making a dagger from it. It’s only when it’s a copper alloy when this is possible. And indeed, one of the distinct features of the BBC (again, understood as the one that arrived to Central Europe from the east) is the use of arsenic bronze (sometimes called pseudo-bronze), a different material from copper that did serve to make weapons such as the famous tanged daggers or palmela points. The use of arsenic bronze was unknown not just to the copper age populations around Europe (including Iberia, obviously) but also to the CWC from which the BBC originated. And this is not a technology that one can easily come up with by chance. So indeed, we have to accept that in the formation of the BBC there was some external influence that allowed for them to acquire this technology and differentiate themselves from other CWC groups. We don’t know the details about it, but it had to happen once the CWC reached the Danube close to the Alps and through it started to have some cultural exchange with the Carpathian basin (and maybe beyond). And this scenario is the only one that offers a somewhat realistic opportunity for a language shift. With the genetic evidence it’s difficult to argue strongly for it, but at least it’s something, unlike the language-from-Iberian scenario which is simply unsustainable.

   However, the linguistic problems for proposing such a shift are quite significant. Not only one is proposing that the population from the steppe that had the largest impact in almost any area replacing the previous population completely actually lost their original language (which is not a good way to then go and argue that they where the ones who spread IE languages so successfully), but why is this shift even needed? One would then have to propose that the CWC was indeed IE, but that is not only unnecessary for explaining the spread of IE languages, it’s just that there is no evidence whatsoever for even considering such possibility. In fact, the only linguistic evidence that we have requires it to have been a non-IE speaking culture. As explained in the earlier post about the origin and spread of IE languages, the non-IE substrate is necessary for languages like Germanic or Celtic. It can be found in Balto-Slavic too as pointed out there. And I’ll reiterate another interesting fact that I mentioned in the comments there:

   “While in the subject of substrates, looking at Krahe’s Old European Hydronymy maps, I noticed that the area includes the East Baltic, which is relevant in this context given that Neolithic farmers never settled that region. The first farmers there were the CWC people.

   Also interesting in this respect is their mention further down where they include examples of the river names Isar, presumed to be Celtic (X. Delamarre), their mention of the Proto-Slavic *ezero (lake) from Proto-Balto-Slavic *éźera or *áźera (lake) (Old Prussian: assaran, Latgalian: azars, Lit: ẽžeras) which has a dubious PIE etymology, while there’s Basque aintzira (lake).”

   Krahe’s poing was that this substrate was actually IE. However, that would require the BBC to have been IE too, which is incompatible with the linguistic reality of the area they inhabited. Being present in the East Baltic region means that it can’t be from the Neolithic farmers from Europe since they never lived in that area. So it’s necessary to reconcile all the data in a way that makes sense.