{"id":50738,"date":"2021-04-05T05:46:24","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T10:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=50738"},"modified":"2021-04-05T05:46:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T10:46:24","slug":"the-genetic-singularity-of-the-basque-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=50738","title":{"rendered":"The \"genetic singularity\" of the Basque people"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linguistically, Basque is generally thought of as an isolate with a very deep history.\u00a0 Consequently, Basque people are also often presumed to have been genetically singular for thousands of years as well.\u00a0 A new study, however, calls this presumption into question:

\"Basque 'genetic singularity' confirmed in largest-ever study<\/a>:\u00a0 The new research shows that this difference only began to emerge 2,500 years ago as a result of centuries of isolation\", by Manuel Ansede, El Pais (English) (4\/1\/21)
<\/p>\r\n

In terms of the findings of the original study, the contents of the subtitle of the article are more important than those of the title.

Here is the title of the original paper, the authors, highlights, and the summary:<\/p>\r\n

\"Genetic origins, singularity, and heterogeneity of Basques<\/a>\", by Andr\u00e9 Flores-Bello, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bauduer, Jasone Salaberria, Bernard Oyhar\u00e7abal, Francesc Calafell, Jaume Bertranpetit, Lluis Quintana-Murci, and David Comas, Current Biology <\/i>(available online 3\/25\/21)<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Highlights<\/b>

Clear genetic singularity of Basques is observed at wide- and fine-scale levels
Basque differentiation might lie on the absence of gene flow after the Iron Ages
Genetic substructure correlated with geography and linguistics is detected

<\/p>\r\n

\r\n
\r\n

Summary<\/b><\/p>\r\n

Basques have historically lived along the Western Pyrenees, in the Franco-Cantabrian region, straddling the current Spanish and French territories. Over the last decades, they have been the focus of intense research due to their singular cultural and biological traits that, with high controversy, placed them as a heterogeneous, isolated, and unique population. Their non-Indo-European language, Euskara, is thought to be a major factor shaping the genetic landscape of the Basques. Yet there is still a lively debate about their history and assumed singularity due to the limitations of previous studies. Here, we analyze genome-wide data of Basque and surrounding groups that do not speak Euskara at a micro-geographical level. A total of \u223c629,000 genome-wide variants were analyzed in 1,970 modern and ancient samples, including 190 new individuals from 18 sampling locations in the Basque area. For the first time, local- and wide-scale analyses from genome-wide data have been performed covering the whole Franco-Cantabrian region, combining allele frequency<\/a> and haplotype-based methods. Our results show a clear differentiation of Basques from the surrounding populations, with the non-Euskara-speaking Franco-Cantabrians located in an intermediate position. Moreover, a sharp genetic heterogeneity<\/a> within Basques is observed with significant correlation with geography. Finally, the detected Basque differentiation cannot be attributed to an external origin compared to other Iberian and surrounding populations. Instead, we show that such differentiation results from genetic continuity since the Iron Age, characterized by periods of isolation and lack of recent gene flow that might have been reinforced by the language barrier.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n


The hypothesis that attachment to language difference may have influenced gene flow is interesting and deserving of further consideration.


Selected reading<\/b>

\"The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe<\/a> \" (1\/6\/09)
\"Divergent histories of languages and genes<\/a> \" (2\/21\/10)
\"Why is Basque an Ancient Language?<\/a>\" (1\/3\/07)
\"The languages of the Caucasus<\/a> \" (8\/25\/08)


[Thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto]<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linguistically, Basque is generally thought of as an isolate with a very deep history.\u00a0 Consequently, Basque people are also often presumed to have been genetically singular for thousands of years as well.\u00a0 A new study, however, calls this presumption into question: \"Basque 'genetic singularity' confirmed in largest-ever study:\u00a0 The new research shows that this difference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[220,298,312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classification","category-language-and-genetics","category-language-and-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50738"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50756,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50738\/revisions\/50756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}