page_title: Basques
section_title: Genetics
hierarchical_section_title: Basques / Genetics
caption_attribution_description: Euskara: Baserritarrak laiatzen. Urtea eta kokapena ezezagunak zaizkigu. Kaso egin argazkian agertzen direnak beste argazki honetan ere agertzen direla: File:07 laiatzen.jpg
context_page_description: The Basques are a European ethnic group, characterised by the Basque language, a common culture and shared genetic ancestry to the ancient Vascones and Aquitanians. Basques are indigenous to and primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country, 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.
context_section_description: In 1920, H. G. Wells referred to the Mediterranean race as the Iberian race. He regarded it as a fourth subrace of the Caucasian race, along with the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic subraces. He stated that the main ethnic group that most purely represented the racial stock of the Iberian race was the Basques, and that the Basques were the descendants of the Cro-Magnons. In 1994, in his book The History and Geography of Human Genes, population geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza stated that "there is support from many sides" for the hypothesis that the Basques are the descendants of the original Cro-Magnons.
  Even before the development of modern genetics based on DNA sequencing, Basques were already noted for distinctive genetic patterns, such as possessing the highest global apportion of the Rh- blood type (35% phenotypically, 60% genetically). Additionally, the Basque population has virtually no B blood type, nor the related AB type. They have a high rate of O blood group but this is probably due to isolation.
  Although they are genetically distinctive in some ways, the Basques are still very typically European in terms of their Y-DNA and mtDNA sequences, and in terms of some other genetic loci. These same sequences are widespread throughout the western half of Europe, especially along the western fringe of the continent.
  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 view that Basques are "living fossils" of the earliest modern humans who colonized Europe. However, studies of the Y-chromosome 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.
  Initially Haplogroup R1b was theorised to be that a Palaeolithic marker, introduced when Europe was repopulated after the Last Glacial Maximum, about 25,000 years ago. As such, Basque populations were used as proxy representatives for the "Palaeolithic component" in admixture studies that tried to quantify the extent of Neolithic diffusions. Such studies concluded that the main components in the European genomes appear to derive from ancestors whose features were similar to those of modern Basques and people of the Near East (or Western Asia), with average values greater than 35% for both these parental populations, regardless of whether molecular information is taken into account or not. The smallest degree of both Basque and Near Eastern admixture is found in Finland, whereas the highest values are, respectively, 70% "Basque" in Spain and roughly 60% "Near Eastern" in the Balkans. This theory encountered inconsistencies even prior to most recent chronological re-evaluations. That R1b should be a Palaeolithic marker was an ad hoc assumption suggested by Semino et al. (2000) and propagated by subsequent scholars without further analysis. Higher resolution STR analysis of R1b lineages from other western European populations (e.g. Italy or Britain (Wales)) show that their populations appear to derive from the Basque ones.
  More recent studies instead propose that R1b spread through Europe from southwest Asia in the Neolithic period or later, between 4,000 and 8,000 years ago.
  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.
  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.
  Several ancient DNA samples have been recovered and amplified from Palaeolithic sites in the Basque region. The collection of mtDNA haplogroups sampled there differed significantly compared to their modern frequencies. The authors concluded that there is "discontinuity" between ancient locals and modern Basques.
  Thus, while Basques harbour some very archaic line
caption: Basque peasants ploughing
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