[lobf]

I spent a year of high school in the Basque Country, and it always stuck out to me that a common feature of the Basques, especially the beefy ones, was incredibly caveman-like.

I know this is not unique to this population, but I also always wondered if it correlated to the fact that it is one of the historic Neanderthal populations. I have a photo of a dude I used to play soccer with that looks like I put a Neanderthal model from the natural history museum in a jersey, and I have met very few people like that in the states. The Basque Country is a very small population.

[tren]

My Dad wrote an article about this 25 years ago or so: https://aoi.com.au/LB/LB705/ (How the Neanderthals became the Basques). He would really get a kick out of people reading it (he's 90 now). His website goes back to 96' and it shows.

[dumol]

Greetings to your father from a European with O- blood, fair freckled skin, and a receded chin! I've always been fascinated with Neanderthals. Happy to see science slowly realising these were not some stupid brutes...

[onlypassingthru]

That is a gem of the old internet; concise, informative, well articulated, it's got it all. Tell your pa thanks for keeping it up for me!

[riffraff]

It was a fun read!

Although one of the references goes to a now dead "reptilian agenda" website which might have been even more interesting:)

[asdff]

>His website goes back to 96' and it shows.

The thing loaded instantly. What a breath of fresh air in 2026. Hats off to Dad.

[poulpy123]

Sorry for your father but nothing in the article makes sense

[olibhel]

Ah, reminds me of good old CGI websites.

[boxedemp]

Basque Country also has an interesting language which doesn't seem related to other European languages. Basque language (or Euskara).

Seems as though it could have been an enclave of neanderthals who eventually integrated with humans.

[lobf]

This is a much-discussed topic. All we know of the Basque language is that it is pre-Indo-European.

The last time I looked in to this, the consensus was that it was most likely a version of otherwise-extinct ancient Celtic.

Now that doesn’t mean that the Basques don’t have a potentially outsized Neanderthal genetic influence, but the odds of their language being so ancient as to pre-exist modern humans entirely is unlikely.

[vintermann]

If it has any relation to Celtic languages, then it's Indo-European by definition.

We can tell how much neanderthal ancestry someone has, more or less. Basque people have no more than others. Despite their odd language, they are much like other Europeans genetically: a similar mix of European hunter gatherers, Anatolian farmers and the bronze age invaders which we believe brought the IE languages to Europe.

[lobf]

Oh! Sorry- I meant to refer to the hypothetical proto-Celtic language!

This is what vibe-commenting from memory gets me.

[mkl]

The proto-Celtic that is Indo-European? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Celtic_language

[piperswe]

Proto-Celtic is also an Indo-European language...

[Cthulhu_]

I'm just an armchair wikipedia browser, but it's an interesting read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Basque_language

This article talks about the Basque language from before contact with the Romans, 5-1 centuries BCE. It also references a "pre-proto-basque" language, that would have been the one before the Celtic invasion of Iberia (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtiberians).

The rabbit hole kind of ends there, as not much linguistic artifacts or history remain from BC unfortunately. But one can imagine the Basque society would live in relative isolation for a long time before that.

[prplxd_nihilist]

The basque and sardinians seem to have the most of DNA from the neolithic european farmers. The sharp features in the rest of europe might come from the steppe people. That way this totally makes sense.