Late Basquisation


Late Basquisation is the minority hypothesis that dates the arrival of the first Basque-speakers in north-eastern Iberia from Aquitaine to the 5th or 6th century AD.

History

The Basque language is a language isolate that has survived the arrival of Indo-European languages in western Europe. Basque historally occupied a much larger territory, including parts of modern-day Béarn, Aragon, Rioja, Castile south of the Pyrenees, and large parts of modern-day Gascony to the north.

Hypothesis

This hypothesis sets the historical geographical spread of the Basque or proto-Basque language later in history. At the end of the Roman Republic and during the first hundreds of years of the Empire, migration of Basque-speakers from Aquitaine overlapped with an population whose most ancient substrate would be Indo-European. The migration is alleged to have increased, with peaks in the 6th and 7th centuries.
In his 2008 book Historia de las Lenguas de Europa, the Spanish philologist and hellenist Francisco Rodríguez Adrados has updated the debate by arguing that the Basque language is older in Aquitaine than in the Spanish Basque country, and it now inhabits its current territory because of pressure of the Celtic invasions.

Claimed evidence

According to this perspective, over a more ancient autochthonous Indo-European occupation, evidence appears of important Celtic establishments in the current territory of the Basque Country. Both cultures coexisted, the Celtic elements being socially predominant, until the arrival of the Romans. This is observed all over Álava and Biscay, thus being concluded that the Caristii and Varduli were not Basque tribes or peoples, but that they were Indo-Europeans like their neighbors Autrigones, Cantabri, and Beroni.
Late Basquisation is supported by the following evidence: