Iberian and the Urals

Iberian and Basque as descendants of theeastern PIE-related ancestor of Paleo-European

in the Eurasian steppesA completely reconsidered view of the genesis of Iberian

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens16.02.2018 – 11.04.2021

Important preliminary noticeThis version presents a complete change of my views on the origin of Iberian andBasque. In the past I still believed in a rather direct descent from members of thepost-LGM (last glacial maximum) agglutinative language continuum of the peri-arctic/peri-glacial belt. Now, after taking into account more and newer information,this was becoming untenable, and I have reached the conclusion that there was anintermediate step via the ‘grandfather’ of Proto-Indo-European, which might beregarded as a southern outcrop or ‘associated member’ of that language continuumin the part that straddles the Urals. In a way, this implies, although not necessarily,that this ‘grandfather of PIE’ (‘avus-PIE’) would take the place of the hypotheticalIndo-Uralic, and that it might also encompass some non-negligible commonalitieswith Altaic/Turkic, besides the Uralic ones, even though these may not have beentransmitted to all of the descendants of ‘avus-PIE’ but only or mainly to theeasternmost ones.

I hereby unambiguously retract my previous basic view as such, even though Ibelieve considerable parts of the reasoning and information is still valid.

As this newer view is based on the general theory exposed in my paper ‘TheGrandfather, the Uncle and the Cousin of Proto-Indo-European’, I reproduceimportant parts of it, just as I did in another paper ‘Celtic and the Adriatic’ (allavailable on www.academia.edu). I apologize to all who have already read thesepapers.

1. Introduction

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Much has been – and is still being - written about the ancientlanguage of the Iberians, and even much more about itsneighbor and seemingly related Basque language. The latter isstill largely being considered a language isolate, by someeven in a pretty absolute sense, while Iberian is oftenstudied in a context of a possible relatedness to Aquitanian -which is almost universally accepted to be a 2,000-year-oldprecursor or a sister language or dialect of the precursor ofhistorically attested Basque.

Great progress has been made in both fields over the last 50years. While Basque studies (at least the internal study) havereached a certain degree of maturity – except on the questionof its origins and possible connections, Iberian studies haveslowed down considerably due to a lack of more diverseinscriptions, and especially the lack of sufficiently longtruly bilingual ones (i.e. texts that are actual translationsof each other, not just presumably parallel renderings oftheir meaning): it often looks like the discipline is waitingfor a ‘Rosetta stone’ while not much more by ways of lexiconor structure, let alone grammar, can be extracted from what isavailable, but even so, some piecemeal progress is still beingmade. Alternative, more daring, avenues of investigationappear to inspire little enthusiasm among specialists inIberian studies, even though things seem to be lightening up abit, lately.

Basque studies are being hampered by non-linguistic, mainlynationalistic preconceived ideas that Basque’s uniquenesscannot be in doubt and that any attempt to relate it to otherlanguages is tantamount to sacrilege. A prejudice strengthenedby the failings of naive classic ‘vasco-iberismo’ and other‘vasco-xyz-ismos’ of the past and their lingering heritage.

At present, this status quo is being attacked frontally byGianfranco Forni’s1,2 Indo-European etymologies for far fromnegligible parts of the Basque vocabulary (includingconsiderable parts of the basic Swadesh-type list), and hisconclusion that Basque was, if not actually Indo-European, atleast or very profoundly relexicalized from some form of Indo-

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European, at a very early date, over several thousands ofyears, resulting in a barely recognizable IE lexicon caused bythe peculiarities of Basque’s phonemics and their peculiarareal (dialectal) development.

I do not agree with this view as such because I deem itimpossible that a language would relexicalize so profoundlywithout any morpho-syntactic reshaping: neither Basque norIberian are flective like Proto-Indo-European and itsdescendants. Evolution from flective to agglutinative hasnever been observed. Instead, I propose a different scheme,deriving Basque and Iberian from an eastern parallel branch toPIE, descending from the same grandfather whose homeland Isituate in the steppes south of, and on both sides, of theUrals, in contact with both the Uralic and the Altaic/Turkichomelands to the north. I have presented this basic theory inmy paper ‘The Grandfather, the Uncle and the Cousin of Proto-Indo-European’ 3

This new theory, if further substantiated, may have a majorimpact on apparently unrelated issues like the ‘Celtic fromthe West’ theory and its possible Italoid and Basque/Iberianconnections, the ‘vasconic’ aspect (as proposed by Th.Vennemann) of the legendary ‘Old-European’, the mutual non-intelligibility of Iberian and Basque, notwithstanding theirstrong resemblance, and many other unresolved questions. Let’shope these insights – as such or in revised form – will not berejected out of hand, and be accepted as valid avenues ofinvestigation.

So, in a certain sense, this paper is a plea for widening thehorizon in different ways: first, to get rid of prejudices andlook at a wider linguistic context, and second, to integratehistorical, demographic, geographic, climatologic and otheruseful data, not necessarily only the proven ones, but alsothe hypothetical and plausible, that provide a framework forthe wider linguistic context.

I am well aware of the fact that sticking one’s neck out thisway may be risky for established professionals with anacademic reputation at stake. This is why I, as a non-

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professional linguist, want to present these ideas, howeverunproven or unprovable for the time being they may be, inorder to get specialist researchers to consider moreadventurous avenues of investigation, and keep others fromfalling in the trap of the ‘miracle translators’ of Iberianlike J. Alonso García, J.L. Román del Cerro and others whofirmly believe in quite literal ‘vasco-iberismo’ and stretchit far beyond the core of truth it likely contains, besidesdemonstrating an absence of insight in historical linguistics.A special case is that of Paul Arnold, who recklessly usedmodern Basque (with Latin-derived loanwords, like ‘mutil’ (<putillus), included) to ‘translate’ Cretan Linear-A texts: Imention this because it cannot totally be excluded that thevery earliest Linear-A texts might be in an Iberian-relatedlanguage (by descent or by substrate), because I presume Creteand maybe Cyprus, as a sidestep of sorts, to be on themigration path of the Iberians to the Spanish Levant, but thechronology makes it more likely that most texts, if not allbut the very oldest, may be in some form of probably South-Anatolian, i.e. non-Hittite, Luwian type ‘Indo-European’, e.g.according to recent publications by S. Rjabchikov4 and F.Woudhuizen1111, based upon both linguistic and culturalinterpretations. This isn’t necessarily contradictory, as Iassume that Anatolian Proto-Iberian and/or similar locallanguages might be the main not strictly Indo-Europeansubstrate of Anatolian Indo-European.

The main purpose of this paper is to propose a – of coursehypothetical – framework on which to ‘hang’ all available dataso as to make sense of them as a whole. Like putting togethera puzzle without having all the pieces, ordering themaccording to an idea of what the total picture might looklike, while not having an actual copy of that picture at hand.

The general approach of this article is to paint a widepanorama with broad brush strokes, entering into details onlyhere and there, whenever needed to underpin its plausibility.At the same time it is an invitation to all to fill in thegaps and/or provide more or better evidence, or come up withalternatives.

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2. The origin of the PIE-like lexicon of Iberian and Basque2.1. The post-glacial situation in the Iberian Peninsula and its initial‘Paleo-Europeanization’ (ca. 5,500 BCE)

2.1.1. The post-refugium, pre-Impresso/Cardial Ware, linguistic situation in theIberian Peninsula

We don’t know anything for sure, maybe nearly nothing at all,about the linguistic situation in the Iberian Peninsula beforethe arrival of Neolithic immigrants. We can safely assume thatthe undoubtedly extremely sparse population of the Peninsularight after the Ice Age came mainly from the Basque-AquitanianRefugium (probably of Cro-Magnon descent, maybe Azillian?),although there may have been some areas populated by(Proto-)Afro-Asiatic immigrants from North Africa in the deepsouth. Historically, according to e.g. Juan Sánchis5, it seemsthat the Strait of Gibraltar was often rather a barrier than alink to North Africa, but I would not extend that to the areasclosest to the Strait of Gibraltar, which, after all, is only14 km wide, permitting even the most primitive sailors toreach the other, clearly visible, side. It is logical tohypothesize that initially, most of the rest of the IberianPeninsular population was largely part of that Refugiumpopulation dispersal, from a linguistic point of view as well.It should not be forgotten that around 5,500 BCE the Saharawas still a savanna with rivers and major wildlife,eliminating the need for emigration of the local population;even in Roman times, North Africa was still the breadbasket ofthe empire, even though the drying up of the Sahara, thatcaused the population to migrate to its borders (like the Nilevalley, the coastal areas and the wetter mountain ranges), hadbeen progressing since around 5,500 BCE.

From a cultural point of view, it is virtually certain thatthe peninsular people were pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer-fishermen, just maybe with very basic pastoralism with semi-wild herds consisting of none of the later ‘classic’ species(bovine cattle, pigs…), maybe already practicing transhumance.

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Their religious views, beliefs and practices must have been ofthe naturalistic shamanic type with astral beliefs, similar tothose of arctic peoples (e.g. the astral-terrestrial bearcult) and northern (Na-Dene) Amerindians.

This period ended with the arrival of the Impresso/CardialWare people in Iberia around 5,500 BCE. In this paper we putforward the hypothesis that the ICW people are the culturaland linguistic (and largely also genetic) forefathers of theBasques and the remainder of the post-5.500 BCE peninsularpopulation, with the exception of a possibly Afro-Asiatic-typefringe in the extreme south, e.g. the La Almagra culturalarea, although admixture of ICW people seems likely.

2.1.2. The linguistic and geographical origin of the ICW people.

We haven’t touched yet the delicate question of what languageor type of language the ICW people spoke or what their primaryorigin before their presence on the Balkan coast of theAdriatic might be. In my previous paper ‘The grandfather, theuncle and the cousin of Proto-Indo-European’ I developed ahypothesis that might shed considerable light on thisquestion. The starting point of that reasoning is that Basque,which I consider to be the direct descendant of the ICWpeople’s language (maybe with some vestiges of their earlierlanguages), seems to have a lot in common with PIE, albeit ina far from straightforward way, contrary to the explicitlydefended position of Gianfranco Forni. As stated before, Idon’t agree with Forni’s conclusion that Basque (and possiblyother related contemporary languages of the Peninsula) wasIndo-European: morpho-syntactically, it remained solidlyagglutinative (even polysynthetic), suffixing, SOV, etc. withits own peculiar phonetics, throughout history. Reconstructedand documented Indo-European languages (i.e. post-1,650 BCE,Anatolia) are flective, and not a single example of a flectivelanguage becoming agglutinative has ever been found. In fact,it seems a universal given that language typology evolution isa one-way (possibly cyclic) process: isolating toagglutinative to flective - and back to isolating, throughsimplification, loss of flection, …: cf. modern English. Thatmakes it impossible for any ancestor of modern Basque to have

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been Indo-European as we know it, unless of course, 6th

millennium (Pre-)Proto-Indo-European hadn’t reached theflective stage yet, for which there are no clear indications,although some IE languages (e.g. Slavic and Germanic) seem topreserve some traits that might point to an agglutinativepast, hard to situate in time. But around 4,500 BCE, PIE seemsto have been flective already. Apart from that, I think partof his IE etymologies are wrong, either because phoneticallythey cannot be derived from PIE in a plausible way (but seemto be derivable from phonetically distinct but relatedvariety) or because the words in question seem to have aUralic or Altaic origin. But even so, I do believe hedemonstrated the existence of a deep, very ancient, layer ofPIE-related lexicon in Basque, directly relatable to the ICWimmigration, in my opinion. I believe the ‘PIE roots’ Fornidetected in Basque are actually cognates, not predecessors.

How to reconcile this pretty clear relationship with PIEroots, and the very different morpho-syntactic andphonological type of Basque? My hypothesis is that Basquedescends from a different branch having a ‘grandfather’ incommon with the branch that led to PIE. That ‘grandfather’would have been (in possibly anachronistic looking terms)agglutinative (probably even polysynthetic), suffixing, SOV,kentum, Q-type (preserving labiovelars), with two ‘genders’(animate/inanimate) and possibly ergative (with polysyntheticverb), split-ergative or with medio-passive.

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Fig. 1: The presumed common‘Stammbaum’ of PIE and PE

This ‘grandfather’ would have had (at least) two ‘sons’ of thesame type, a western one, the ‘father’ of PIE proper, and aneastern one, the ‘father’ of what I call ‘Paleo-European’(PE), an agglutinative, suffixing, SOV, kentum, P-type(labialized labiovelars, syllable-initial s > h), with two‘genders’ (animate/inanimate) and possibly (split?)ergative(with multipersonal verb) or with medio-passive. I assume thatoriginally, Proto-Basque and Proto-Iberian were either part ofthe dialects of that PE language or direct ‘sons’ of it, whichwould make them ‘(second)cousins’ of PIE.

As to the place of origin (Urheimat) of the ‘grandfather’, mybest guess is that it covers an extensive area coinciding withthe Cis-Uralic homeland of PIE plus a Trans-Uralic area eastof it in the Kirghiz Steppe, bordering to the north with

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Proto-Uralic and Proto-Altaic homelands near the contact pointof these two within the peri-glacial continuum of the peri-arctic nomads’ agglutinative, suffixing, SOV languages thatstretch into the Americas.

Agglutinative P-kentum Paleo-European (PE), or rather itsimmediate predecessor – which or may not have been labializedyet, would have seen a two-pronged expansion to the Westfollowing two different routes6 7 : a northern route (north ofthe Alps) identifiable with the LBK ware expansion, and asouthern route to the Kura-Araxes valley (ancient CaucasianIberia), Anatolia, the Aegean and the Balkan coast of theAdriatic, and from there further expansion to the West,identifiable with the expansion of (non-Levantine)Impresso/Cardial ware. This could be situated in the 6th

millennium BCE, but it seems likely that it started evenbefore, in the later phases of the post-Younger Dryaspopulation explosion. It ended up occupying virtually all ofEurope, thus creating an omnipresent agglutinative PIE-likebackground/substrate of the P-type. In the Iberian Peninsula,this would have caused the overwhelming of the very sparse(Azilian??) population and the beginning of what would becomethe Basque language in their more recalcitrant realm.

A large part of the Anatolian-Aegean (still agglutinative)branch would have stayed there up to the conquest or crowdingout by ‘Anatolian IE’ (Luwian, Hittite, …) from the north thatoccurred around 3,200-3,000 BCE, causing an emigration byisland-hopping as far as the Iberian Peninsula’s Mediterraneancoast, importing a language that would later be known as‘Iberian’, an obvious ‘brother’ of ‘Basque’, but estranged bya 3,000+ km distance for 2,500 years.

It cannot be excluded that there was also another expansionfrom eastern Anatolia (maybe Çatal Höyük, 8th – 6th millenniumBCE) to Sumeria, and even further into the Indus valley(Harappa, Mohendjo-Daro). Arguments for a presence in Sumeriarest on the suspicion that the oldest figurative glyphs (Uruk)describe objects or animals,whose presumed ‘Indo-European-like’ name corresponds to thelater phonetic value in Sumerian8, cf. the similar (but non-IE)

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origin of the Phoenician alphabet. There is, however, animportant caveat: some of those phonetic values point into thedirection of a non-labialized Q-kentum language, whichprobably means that labialization would not have occurred yetin the sub-branch that eventually reached Sumeria.

Fig. 2: The presumed dispersal of PE.

2.1.3. The arrival of the Impresso/Cardial Ware (ICW) people from the Adriatic, and their presumed 'Paleo-European' language, an agglutinative 'cousin' of later PIE

It seems that the Impresso/Cardial Ware people and theirculture arrived in the Iberian peninsula via various paths:(1) partly directly by sea from Sardinia and maybe northernSicily to the Spanish Levant (without landing on the BalearicIslands), (2) partly by a combination of sea and land, via theislands of Sardinia and Corsica to the Ligurian coast and (3)

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partly by sea from Sicily to the wider Lisbon area, SEAndalusia and the Algarve, either directly or withintermediate stops in one or more of several areas along theNorth African coast, like Tunis (the later Carthago), Algiers,Oran, Tangier.

Genetics relating the Galician-Cantabrian coastal populationsto those of Portugal indicate an internal migration ratherthan landing on the Cantabrian coast, while the finds ofNeolithic settlements in e.g. Atxoste (Álava) seem to confirma cultural diffusion in the direction of the present SpanishBasque Country through the Ebro valley. These coastalsettlements appear to have been rather local and isolated inthe beginning, excluding any mass migration. See e.g. J.Zilhão9. It is also thought that Impresso/Cardial ware culture‘invaded’ the Provence.

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Fig. 3: Presumed migration path of the Adriatic ICW people to the Iberian Peninsula.

The Impresso/Cardial ware culture almost certainly broughtearly agriculture to Iberia (and to the other regions of itseventual spread)10. The fact that many of the plant speciesinvolved are ‘allochthonous’ (wheat, barley, …) points to anactual immigration or at least a physical transfer of theplant species by some transport mechanism, e.g. by ship, orover land by the spread of agriculture and their cultivationto adjacent territories (‘diffusion’ of practices). The oldesttraces of the ICW culture are found around Israel, Lebanon,Syria, also very ancient nuclei of agriculture. But theAdriatic ICW people lack the typical haplotypes, which leadsto the idea that they were different people who adopted the‘Neolithic agricultural package’ and pottery from the easternICW people. The islands of Crete (Κρήτη) and Corfu (Κέρκυρα)may have played the role of ‘bridge’ between these two worlds.

It seems that the settlements on the Iberian Mediterraneancoast only expanded into the Ebro valley, while the western(Tagus-Douro-Mondego area) groups expanded rather into thelater Celtiberian area (central Spain) and from there to theCantabrian coast, and probably back from the later Celtiberianarea to the south-west, and maybe the north-west as well,unless the whole western peninsula (i.e. Portugal plusGalicia) was populated directly from the Tagus area.

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Fig. 4: The observed presence of (non-Middle Eastern) Impresso/Cardial Ware and LBK

It is unclear whether the southeastern pockets representindependent landings or are the result of expansion. As theimmigrants’ agrarian culture and language rapidly invadednearly the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, given the extremelysparse indigenous population, it is likely that the localpopulation, originally from the Basque-Aquitanian Refugium,was completely overwhelmed and underwent profound languagechange. The most likely basic reason for that is that thenumbers of hunter-gatherers are severely limited by theirpreferred naturally occurring food sources, while agricultureallows for a drastic multiplication of the populationcommensurate with the greatly increased availability of foodfrom crops. One might suspect that in certain areas phenomena

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like the emergence of creoles (on top of an indigenous, maybeAzilian substrate?) may have taken place as well, althoughlater developments might cast serious doubt on this.

Sooner or later, this expanding new cultural wave must havemade contact with the people in the former Basque-AquitanianRefugium itself and from some surrounding areas, who were verylikely still hunter-fishermen-gatherers, maybe some of themearly pastoralists with semi-wild herds and transhumance.These Pyrenean people, who had lived pretty much in isolationfor millennia because of the geography and their isolated pastin the Basque-Aquitanian Refugium of the last Ice Age, seem tohave been very attached to that lifestyle, as the presence ofagricultural foodstuffs in the absence of relevant farmingtools, and the almost incredible survival (up to the early 20th

century) of the related shamanic beliefs and traditions - likethose derived from the bear cult - suggest. I expect them tohave been overwhelmed as well by the ICW people and haveundergone profound language change, although that may havetaken some more time, and without completely erasing theirancient culture, religion and part of their lifestyle, butmaybe preserving traces of their earlier indigenous language.Anyway, this would be the origin of the very earliest form ofthe Basque language.

2.2. The arrival of Iberian (ca. 3,000 BCE), the colonization of the Iberian east coast and the Ebro valley

The geographic and cultural-linguistic origin of the Iberianshas long been shrouded in mystery. In my previous paper ‘TheGrandfather, the Uncle and the Cousin of Proto-Indo-European’,large parts of which have been cited in the general sketchabove, I proposed that the Proto-Iberians were part of theeastern branch (PE) descending from the ‘grandfather’ of PIE,settling in the Kura-Araxes valley (ancient Caucasian‘Iberia’) possibly in the 8th millennium or so and later inmost of Anatolia. No wonder that later Iberian in Spain (andProto-Basque, from the same ‘father’) contains some Proto-Uralic and twice as much Proto-Altaic, through contact beforethe southward migration, probably from the eastern part of the

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Urheimat of the ‘grandfather’ of PIE, somewhere in the KirghizSteppe north of Lake Aral and Lake Balkhash. That areabordered to the north with the peri-glacial nomads’agglutinative, SOV, suffixing etc. linguistic continuum(super- Sparachbund) near the contact area between the Proto-Uralic and Proto-Altaic homelands. The Ancient Greeks relatedthe Iberians to Caucasian Iberia (the Kura-Araxes valley orneighboring areas), and they were most likely right. It ishardly a guess that the Greeks knew that locals in the Kura-Araxes valley called their river ‘Ibar’. Traces of all thatmay be the underlying cause of the origin of the 19th–20th c.‘Basque-Caucasian’ hypothesis, with respected linguistspretending to have found cognates of Basque in the Caucasus;they were probably finding vague (and often mistaken) tracesof Iberian in Basque.

From the Kura-Araxes valley these Paleo-European people wouldhave moved into Anatolia and the Aegean from the north-east.As I mentioned before, a large part of the Anatolian-Aegean(still agglutinative) branch of Paleo-European would havestayed there (and on the Adriatic shores of the north-westernBalkans, see below) up to around 3,200-3,000 BCE.

As to the reason for the westward migration of the Anatolian-Aegean Iberians, it can hardly be doubted that it was causedby the conquest from the north by the earliest Anatolian IEpeoples (later known as Hittites, Luwians, etc.). That seemsto have happened during the climatic crisis (the Pioraoscillation) of 3,200 BCE, just when Anatolian IE wassplitting off from the main stem of PIE. Iberian would be thesubstrate that caused such strange forms of Anatolian IE,especially in the Luwian branch (probably the oldest), likeLycian and Lydian. They may have invaded Greece and the north-western Balkans up to Kosovo or thereabout - where there isanother river Ibar. So, they would also have invadedterritories held by earlier ICW peoples, their somewhatestranged ‘brothers’ (linguistically speaking!).

The question remains, what happened to the lingering Iberianse.g. in the Carpathian Basin, Thrace, etc. ? I presume theyformed the base of the later Illyrians, Thracians, Moesians

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and Dacians, all being peoples that became finally Indo-Europeanized but with an Iberian substrate, creating, as itwere, a separate branch of IE, that produced e.g. Albanian(under Italoid influence).

The basis for this assumption might be presented as follows:

The concept of ‘Illyrian language’ itself is very ill-defined.The enduring mystery surrounding the Illyrian language(s)might be resolved if its name might be tied to the veryfrequent segment in Iberian texts: ‘ilduŕ/illuŕ/ilur’, that seems tobe related to another frequent segment ‘ildun/illun/ilun’, generallyconsidered to mean ‘citadel, oppidum, bastida’ vel sim. So,‘ilduŕ/illuŕ/ilur’ might be an ethnonym, according to its ending,possibly the endonym of the local people. That might suggestthat they were related somehow to the Iberians, or simplyIberians still lingering in the Balkans after the mainmigration wave to the West around 3,000 BCE. Note that thereis a river Ibar in Serbia/Kosovo, which may be an indicationof their former presence in the region. Their language may beat the root of the local diversification and the peculiarnature of some of those local languages like the ancestor ofAlbanian (and of the substrate language of Romanian, besidesP-Celtic), a labialized language that looks like an Indo-Europeanized (more Italoid) version of a Paleo-Europeanbranch. Illyrian is often associated or classified withThraco-Dacian(-Moesian), languages that are very poorly known.All I can say is that the few Thracian inscriptions soundsuperficially Paleo-European/Basque-like, but at the same timedescendant words of what appear to be PIE roots or cognateshave been identified. Of course, this also true for Basque andIberian.

In historical times, the Iberians in Spain were living alongthe Levantine coast, from the Roussillon (Ensérune) toAndalusia (El Argar), and maybe even farther west, if theoriginal Tartessians were indeed or had been (e.g. laterCelticized) actual Iberians (maybe mixed with an ancient localAfro-Asiatic population). The name Calpe for Gibraltarsuggests that at least the neighboring toponymy remainedIberian because of the definitely Iberian Calpe (with the

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Peñón de Ifach), prov. Alicante, (a name tentativelytranslated as ‘at the foot of the rock’ by analogy withBasque). However, the Iberians were clearly centered on theregion of Castellón-Valencia-Alicante, slightly inland (e.g.La Serreta, Alcoy and La Bastida near Moixent), probably fordefensive reasons (on ‘oppida’, ‘bastidas’), and it is likelythat there was a southward expansion along the coast that mayhave reached Los Millares (Almería) around 3,000 BCE, when thewalls were partly rebuilt, possibly after the conquest by theIberians. The relatively recent discovery of the big fortressin La Bastida near Totana, Murcia, dating back to 2,200 BCE,in the southern Iberian (El Argar) region, with apparentlyimportant cultural and technical traces from the EasternMediterranean, completes the picture of a people arrived bysea from the East. It seems likely this was accomplished byisland-hopping, maybe starting from the south-westernAnatolian coast or eastern Balkans, via Crete, the Cyclades(like Santorini), the Malta archipelago, Sicily, Sardinia, andsome Balearic Islands like Mallorca. It is possible that partof the ‘Sardinian’ Iberians migrated north via Corsica toLiguria and became later mixed with the Levantine Iberians inthe Roussillon and Languedoc region. The case of Cyprus ismore obscure: it might be an eastern expansion of Iberian, orelse a later one of Luwian (with a strong Iberian substrate,according to my view), also from the southern Anatolian coast,if S. Rjabchikov4 and F. Woudhuizen11 are right (they seeAnatolian non-Hittite in most but the very earliest Linear Atexts in Crete and Cyprus).

What prompted me originally to formulate my assumption aboutthe western migration of the (Proto-) Iberians was mainly of acultural nature: along the whole path, there are prettysimilar facts that point to a coherent identifiable culturecharacterized by an agriculturalist, up to a certain pointmatriarchal, society and its religious expression, a chthonicreligion: the statuettes (and bigger statues e.g. in Malta) ofa fat seated (possibly pregnant) woman, clearly a fertilitygoddess/earth-mother (maybe a forerunner of Lydian Artemis),underground ‘temples’ (natural caves or excavated ones) whichare not a general characteristic of all other neolithicfarmers, the role of a male counterpart of the earth-mother

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associated with some wild animals like the wild boar or thewild aurochs (later identified with the bull when thedomesticated aurochs, the ancestor of bovine cattle,vanished), other horned animals like the he-goat (cf. BasqueAker), or anthropomorphic mythical horned beings like theFauns etc., found as remnants e.g. in Greek and Romanreligion. This counter-god represents wild nature, always benton re-conquering the fertile land or destroying it (e.g. bythe wild boar). The fertility rites on Delos, that consistedof seating women on the holy fertile ground by the pond(‘Sacred Lake’, now a dry enclosed area covered with a pinebush, drained since the 1920’s because of malaria) to transferfertility, go back to these chthonic religious beliefs thatare clearly related to the emergence of agriculture inNeolithic eastern Anatolia. Some finds on Delos point to a( maybe religious) use as far back as 4,000 BCE.

The origins of animal husbandry - not simple pastoralism -also play an important role in my assumption about the easternorigin of the Iberians, so I shall dwell on this subject a bitfurther:

Fig. 5: Bull leapers in Knossós (1500 BCE) and in Spain (2014 CE)

Cows are believed to descend from about 80 domesticatedaurochs from upper Mesopotamia/S. Turkey/N. Iraq ca. 10,000BCE, exactly the place where the ‘bull cult’ (Tauros, cf.Taurus Mountains) seems to come from. This cult spreadwestward from island to island (see e.g. the Cretan Minotaurosor the ‘bull leapers’ from Knossos, the frescoes fromSantorini, …) until it reached the Iberian Peninsula, where itstill lives on in the ‘corrida de toros’ and other bull games.The pure (Knossos) form of acrobatic bull game is perpetuated

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in the ‘course de taureaux’ in the Rhône delta (Camargue, LaCrau) and in extremely similar bull games in some Spanishvillages. The original religious base is quite obvious:agricultural man against wild nature, taunting it and winning– well, most of the time.

Goats are descended from wild goats from SW Asia and E.Europe. The remains of the small temple (see Fig. 6) at Alcudiade Elche/l’Alcùdia d’Elx, Alicante, show very clearly that theIberians had a form of goat cult, cf. Basque Aker. Notehowever that ‘Aker’ seems to have a PIE-like, probably Paleo-European origin: *ak-‘ = sharp, *ker- = horn.

Sheep are most likely descended from the wild mouflon of SEEurope and Asia.

The origin of domesticated pigs is now believed to be a hybridof a domesticated descendant of the Asian wild boar, and ofthe European wild boar that was never domesticated. The‘indigenous’ modern Iberian pig still has the grayish color ofits wild ancestors; it is also raised in a traditionalfashion, letting it roam in (Mediterranean type – Quercus Suber)cork oak forests, foraging for acorns. Domesticated chickens and ducks originated in SE Asia.

So it can be safely assumed that animal husbandry as we knowit has its origins in the easternmost reaches of theMediterranean and beyond, eastward. The older Impresso/CardialWare people already brought it to the Iberian Peninsula, butthe maritime and Pyrenean ‘Basques’ seem to have resisted itsintroduction for a long time, probably because they simplyneeded neither agriculture nor proper animal husbandry (notpastoralism) to feed themselves, and lived in relativeisolation.

Maybe this is the place to attempt to explain the ambivalentattitude of the neolithic farmers in relation to animalhusbandry. It seems that animal husbandry did not originatewith the E. Mediterranean farmers but with nomadic tribes withsemi-wild herds, except maybe in the case of cows, which seem

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to have been domesticated from the aurochs by already settledfarmers in upper Mesopotamia/S. Turkey. The farmers must havebeen very wary of adopting domesticated goats and pigs, notonly because of their wild history of destroying farm- andgrassland, but also because even the domesticated herds wereand still are very destructive: wild boars and pigs transformgrassland into a mud pool in a nick of time; goats tear outthe vegetation instead of cutting it above ground with theirteeth like sheep. The ancient Greeks already complained aboutherds of goats destroying their land (desertification).Obviously, to nomadic herdsmen this is a minor problem: theyjust move to a new place, something farmers cannot do easily.This reasoning might explain why in their mind, goats, boars(and even domesticated, but still dangerous bulls in certaincontexts) continued to represent wild nature bent ondestroying their land, while adopting animal husbandry at thesame time. As a result, the goat and the boar could continueto play the role of the (male) anti-earth-mother, or itsinstrument, in chthonic religions and the traces they left inthe Classic period Olympian religions. At the same time, achthonic goddess like Artemis (Lydian, Anatolian pre-IEorigin, Etruscan Aritimi) could simultaneously be theprotector of fertility and of wild animals – and be a virginand a huntress all at once.

In this context, it might be useful for the understanding ofthe transition from shamanic to chthonic beliefs to elaboratea bit on Artemis: etymologically, it is possible to explainher name as a combination of ‘bear’ (Gr. ‘arktos’ and its PIEroot *h₂rtk̂os and ‘female’ (‘eme/ama’ or similar in Uralic andAltaic, Basque and some IE), leading to a meaning of ‘mother-bear’ or ‘she-bear’. According to one version of thesurrounding myths, she even breast-fed the huntress Atalantawhile in the shape of a bear-mother, and in Ephesos she wasrepresented as ‘polymastè’ = many-breasted. That sounds a lotlike a transition figure to make chthonic beliefs acceptableto shamanic people, or as a form of syncretism, not unlike theever-increasing importance of the Virgin Mary (and herappearance in grottoes or caves, like the Basque chthonicMari/Amaya/Mayra/…) in Catholicism, a way of includingelements of a previous religion into the new one, cf. other

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examples: the Christmas tree (winter solstice), Easter eggsand rabbits or hares (fertility rites, spring equinox, …). Itis not surprising that the first claimed appearance of theVirgin Mary in a grotto occurred in Lourdes, a formerlyBasque, now Catalanized town (**Elordi) where old Basque-derived beliefs still lived on among local mostly near-illiterate country folk - like Bernadette Soubirous (< Zubiru< Zubiburu?) - in the 19th century.

There are also - pretty difficult to interpret with anycertainty - traces of human sacrifice (baby skeletons in smallamphorae) in the small temple ruins at Alcudia deElche/l’Alcùdia d’Elx, the ancient Iliki - a transparent name,also in Basque (even though Iberian): ‘part of the city’ maybe‘citadel’ – which comes from a diminutive, cf. Sp.‘ciudad/ciudadela’), for an advanced defensive post based on aformer island, now a slightly elevated plateau (a few meters)in the middle of low-lying alluvial land, the bottom of aformer bay, called the Sinus Ilicitanus by the Romans, max. 22m deep in Iberian times, now farmland, in a part that waspreviously the bottom of the former estuary of the RíoVinalopó. It blocked the access to the city proper (Ili?),farther upstream. In the mud brick temple there is an interiorroom with a stone table that looks very much like asacrificing altar; if this really points to a religiouspractice, it certainly comes from the Middle East, cf. babysacrifice among the Phoenicians to their god Moloch, and moregenerally, the finding of such amphorae with baby skeletonsfrom Israel to Elche, on the islands in between and in NorthAfrica, like in Egypt and in the Phoenician settlements. Theconstruction technique of the temple itself, using mud bricks,looks like it came straight from the early Neolithicsettlement of Çatal Höyük (Konya, Turkey), inhabited from7,500 BCE to 5,700 BCE, approximately, possibly by Proto-Iberians (i.e. Paleo-Europeans). The end date may be relatedto the 6th millennium floods.

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Fig. 6: Photo of the Iberian temple at Alcudia de Elche/l’Alcùdia d’Elx. Note the goathorns near the gate and the sacrificing table in the back. (Photo: E. Selleslagh,2013)

According to Strabo, the Iberians pretended to have 6,000years old poetry, but that is most likely to be taken with theproverbial grain of salt, although it may simply mean that theIberians were aware of a very long history of their culturebefore Strabo’s time, and that memories of pre-migration timesperhaps still lingered on. The 6,000 years may even have beenquite accurate, if one includes the first wave ofPaleo.European immigration (their forefathers) around 5,500BCE.

Dating of the Iberian westward migration may be based on twofactors: First, the climatic crisis around 3,200 BCE (Pioraoscillation) that may have triggered migration (like the laterclimatic crises around 2,200 and 1,200 BCE), and second, therelatively sudden extinction of the dwarf goat Myotragus fromMallorca (until then the only mammal on the island, maybe from

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an extremely ancient shipwreck, possibly of the ICW people,since goats come from SW Asia) around 3,000 BCE, which wasprobably caused by the arrival of the first humans on theislands, because till then, the whole fauna of the Balearicislands was typical for uninhabited islands, with virtuallydefenseless animals because of the absence of top predatorslike humans, and very different fauna on each island. For thatreason, I presume those first actual settlers were theIberians, because the Impresso/Cardial ware (ca. 5,500 BCE)people - or any other people for that matter – arrived far tooearly in Iberia. What is not known, of course, is whether theIberians had already arrived previously on the Levantinecoast. I don’t think so, because the coastal region was muchmore attractive to the Neolithic farmers than the islands withtheir limited natural resources, so there was little incentiveto move to the islands. Besides, there was already ancientagriculture on the coastal plains since the arrival of theImpresso/Cardial ware people 2,500 years earlier, who may beconsidered estranged descendants of their own forefathers.

It should be noted that the direct descendants of theaboriginal inhabitants of the Basque-Aquitanian Refugium, assub-arctic hunter/fishermen-gatherer Ice Age refugees, areunlikely to have had agriculture or even proper animalhusbandry - except maybe some nomad-style semi-wild animalherding, i.e. primitive pastoralism - during their time in theRefugium. It is unclear up to what point they acquiredagricultural practices from the earlier invading ICW people -or got mixed with them (as genetics seem to indicate12) -before the arrival of the Iberians, who were undoubtedly veryaccomplished farmers due to their relatively late Aegeanorigin. The very long-lasting conservation of the Basque’shunter/fishermen-gatherers’ shamanic religious beliefs seemsto indicate they resisted the change of life style for a veryconsiderable period.

Their later well documented chthonic beliefs and socialorganization associated with an agrarian society shows thatmany remnants and characteristics of such traditions are to befound along the migration path we assume for the Iberians (inparticular the cave ‘temples’). So, I think that the Iberians

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were the ones who finally ‘converted’ them to agriculture inthe course of a very long-lasting contact. Almost incredibly,these chthonic beliefs were still alive in the early 20th

century, notwithstanding Christianism. And so was matrilinearinheritance. Proto-historic and historic Indo-Europeanimmigrants with their presumably Olympian-style religions andpatriarchal societies, appeared only later in the IberianPeninsula, namely during a presumed Adriatic Italoid‘immigration wave’ ca. 2,200 BCE, that gave rise to Lusitanianand later Celtic13; they don’t seem to have influenced themaritime and Pyrenean Basques’s beliefs very much until theadvent of Christianism, and even then the old (both shamanicand chthonic) beliefs were never completely superseded untilthe early 20th century.

Some of their ancestral cultural manifestations, that wereattested long after, like the Phrygian cap and Lydian modetone scale could be due to the Iberians who took them to theIberian Peninsula: the cap survived in Mediterranean Spain(and, quite significantly, around all the places where theIberians may have been during their presumed migrations) asthe barretina, and the musical tone scale survived in Flamenco

and, in a watered-down version, in typical Spanish music likethe traditional paso dobles that accompany bull fights (another‘non-coincidence’ – see above). Note that some newpublications14 suggest that the persistence of musical stylesand preferences of ancient peoples may be more significantthan the continuity of language.

2.3. The formation of a Basque-Iberian Sprachbund

At first sight – even upon closer examination – Iberian andBasque look pretty similar, but with a number of typical andvery distinct traits in Iberian, like Anatolian-like elements– mainly Lycian- (e.g. 'ke' = 'and', and some vocabulary thatmay have been carried over into Basque: arrano, anai (<nana),sag-,... or morphemes like -atz(e) < -assa), pronounced The Gypsies did not invent Flamenco: they just played the local popular music in all the places they went to (Hungary, Romania, Andalusia, …), but of course not in its pure form but in their own interpretation, rendering, or adaptation.

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iotacism, likely nasal and maybe uvular traits, and presumablyaccusative or split-ergative typology. The Iberian verbalsystem (with a presumed medio-passive) might be much simplerthan the Basque polysynthetic one, the present form of whichmay or may not be very ancient.

Even so, Iberian cannot be ‘understood’ in any realistic senseof the word, through Basque. They are mutually unintelligiblebut for some similar-looking words or morphemes guessed tohave a similar meaning or function. Up to now, all‘translations’ from Iberian are educated guesses at best, andusually much worse than that. Sometimes, using the materialsupport of the text, the context and the apparent function(stelae, votive texts, commercial documents,...), as well assuspected Basque cognates, it is possible to catch a glimpseof the general meaning of the content.

The Iberians' culture and language were clearly dominant inMediterranean Spain. It is nearly certain that Iberian had ahigher standing than Basque during the pre-Roman heyday ofIberian, and that it was, besides a vernacular of theMediterranean coast, a conqueror’s or dominant elite’slanguage, the language of the commercial and economic hub, ora lingua franca of trade – or any combination of the above.

The very Basque looking Aquitanian language as we ‘know’ itfrom the Aquitanian inscriptions is a sister language, theprecursor or a dialect of the precursor of historic Basque.

The historic Iberians were also culturally quite Hellenized inhistorical (i.e. documented) times – unless in certainrespects it was the other way round, because there arenumerous indications that the Greeks inherited a great dealfrom the earlier pre-Indo-European peoples i.e. the AegeanPaleo-Europeans/Iberians. It is not clear if Celtiberian hadany significant impact on Iberian: probably not much because,according to my theory, Celtic was formed later and underwentclear Basque-Iberian influences.

I believe, according to the 'ili-briga' line (the border thatseparates the Celtic and Lusitanian Indo-European toponyms to

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the west from the Basque-Iberian toponyms to the east), thatthe Iberians were in long intense contact with the ancestors(a Paleolithic minority overwhelmed by ICW people) of theBasques via the Ebro valley [(H)Iberus = Ibar], which is likea highway between the Mediterranean and the Rioja/southernAlava region at the southern fringe of the present BasqueCountry: early genetic studies by Cavalli-Sforza had alreadydemonstrated that there is a continuum from the Basque Country(including Iparralde, the French Basque Country) to theLevant. Besides, there is a precedent: about 2,500 yearsbefore my presumed arrival date of the Iberians, theImpresso/Cardial Ware people seem to have used this same‘highway’ during their very fast expansion (less than 200years) from the Spanish Levant to sites like e.g. Atxoste(Álava)15 and the Atlantic coast.

Contrary to e.g. de Hoz, I am convinced that the Basques formpidgins/creoles very easily, as demonstrated later with theIcelanders and the Algonquin Amerindians, and adopt andnativize words from neighboring languages even more easily,even at the expense of native words. So, I have no problembelieving Aquitanian/Proto-Basque and later Basque were theresult of convergence of pre-Proto-Basque with Iberian (andmaybe partly vice versa), especially if they had many commonfeatures like general typology and extremely ancient commonroots to begin with. I think de Hoz and many others, reasoningin a Spanish environment, seriously underestimate the degreeof multilingualism, creolization, nativization of foreignlexicon and the like in Neolithic proto-history, the reasonbeing the absence of a nation-state and the break-up ofancient small-scale tribal organization, once the greatmigrations over land and by sea, and long-range culturalexpansion and economic exchange began in the early Neolithic,and maybe even earlier. 

3. Iberian/Basque and Uralic/Altaic3.1. The origin of the Uralic and Altaic traces in Iberian and Basque

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Michel Morvan16 was definitely not the first to suggest orimply a Uralic relationship or partial origin for Basque, -and even a much longer-range relationship (as far as Siberianand Amerindian) - but he certainly provided the strongestevidence, e.g. in relation to the first and second personsingular pronoun and/or possessive suffix (and ‘zero’ for thethird person). That would also apply to Iberian, since, in myscheme, the grandfather of PIE and PE was in close contactwith the Eurasian peri-glacial belt of the nomads’agglutinative languages. It should be noted that in M.Morvan’s etymological dictionary of Basque17, completed with myown investigations, the number of Altaic roots outweigh theUralic ones two-to-one among the words he and/or I consideridentifiable as derived from Proto-Uralic or Proto-Altaicroots. That is also the main reason why I see the father ofPE’s homeland to the east of PIE’s homeland, which was mainlyin contact with Uralic and less with Altaic – possibly theroot cause of the Indo-Uralic hypothesis. But there is more:Morvan proposes the following set of 1st and 2nd person markers:sg. mi/ni and ti/ki, pl. mu/nu and tu/ku. At least in thesingular, the n/k forms are mainly found in the east,including Amerindian languages like Quechua and Lenape(Delaware), and in Basque (ni/hi < ni/ki). The m/t forms aretypically western, like PIE. The situation in Iberian isunclear: it is possible that the –Yi suffix (Y is an Iberiannasal sign of uncertain quality) is a first-person singularmarker, cf. Basque ‘ni’.

Let us now go into some details about the peri-glacial belt ofthe nomads’ agglutinative languages.

In brief, the last glacial maximum (LGM) that ended ca. 20,000yrs. ago, pushed the peri-Arctic/sub-Arctic hunter-gathererpeoples living along the Northern Ice Cap Rim (NICR) far moresouth than their present locations. It is equally possiblethat those northern regions were extremely sparsely populatedto begin with, and that the majority of the hunter-gatherersactually already lived further south than the pre-LGM ice caprim because of the inhospitable climate and environment. Ibelieve they formed some sort of a long-range cultural andlinguistic continuum: a Sprachbund, different forms of mixing,

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mutual influence or other processes like a chain of contactslinking regional sub-ensembles (Sprachbund von Sprachbünde),leading to a pretty advanced degree of convergence. Thesegroups are not to be seen as unified nor as homogeneous, butrather as the origin of a varied collection of later peoplesthat preserved certain traits in their language. They may ormay not have been genetically related, but that does notmatter here. I base this belief on the numerous linguisticfacts from equally numerous publications by reputed linguists,as carefully picked, tested for veracity and plausibility, andcollected by Morvan, and also on archaeological finds alongthe old ice cap rim pointing to very similar ways of life and(basically shamanic) cults. Members of this continuum wouldhave been those (much) later identifiable as Uralic, Altaic,etc., stretching into the Americas after crossing the BeringStrait, starting around 16,000 BCE or even earlier. This doesnot (necessarily) imply ‘genetic’ relationship (neitherbiological nor linguistic-phylogenetic), but it does assume apretty high degree of resemblance, especially grammaticallyand typologically, and rather less lexically, except fordirectly neighboring areas. J. Janhunen18 puts it this way: “What is, however, an undeniable fact is that the Uralic languages belong to a singletrans-Eurasian belt of agglutinative languages together with the so-called Altaiclanguages, including Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean (Koreanic), and Japanese(Japonic). In this case, typological parallelism is accompanied by areal adjacency,allowing us to speak of a distinct Ural-Altaic language area and language type.Characteristic features of the Ural-Altaic language type include a modifier-before-headword word order both in the sentence (SOV) and within the nominal phrase(GAN), suffixally marked agglutinative morphology both of the noun and the verb,as well as polysyllabic root structure with simple phonotactic patterns and nosuprasegmental distinctions. Deviations from the prototypical Ural-Altaic languagetype occur in the individual branches and languages, especially in the west (Finnic,Saamic), north (Northern Samoyedic), and east (Koreanic, Japonic), but the basictypological orientation is nevertheless observable throughout the transcontinentalbelt.”

When the ice cap began to retreat, many of those hunter-gatherers followed it northwards, following their habitualprey and maybe the already shifting natural habitat of theirsemi-wild herds of e.g. reindeer, but, and this is the core ofmy hypothesis, far from negligible groups stayed behind and

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enjoyed the milder climate and what it had to offer. They mayhave migrated a bit, but in essence, at least initially, theystayed more or less at the same longitude, very roughlyspeaking: the pre-proto-Uralic ancestors west of the Uralsplus some small territory east of that (the middle and lowerVolga valley and the upper Tobol), and the pre-proto-Altaicancestors further east, but staying in contact, andinfluencing each other, somewhere east of the upper Tobol,i.e. occupying the steppes north of the Black Sea, the CaspianSea (which is actually a huge lake), Lake Aral and stretchingas far as Lake Balkhash.

Note that the Caspian Sea and Lake Aral had a wildlyfluctuating water level and extent (the Caspian Sea expandingto the north, the Lake Aral to the south) with maxima (aroundthe 6th millennium BCE) 10 to 20 m higher than today; thenorthern Caspian plain, which is below present sea level, mayhave been at least partially flooded several times during thelast 10,000 years. It is likely that at times, e.g. in the 6th

millennium BCE, the northern Pontic-Caspian-Aral (or Kirghiz)Steppe was far less arid than today. In the earliestNeolithic, Lake Aral was overflowing into the Caspian Sea, andthis in turn overflowed into the Black Sea, which still had amuch lower level than today, up to the great flood of the 6th

millennium when the natural dam in the of the Bosphorus wasbreached by the rising general sea level caused by the meltingof the ice cap.

We assume that the southern fringe of the peoples that stayedbehind, just south of the earliest Proto-Uralics and theProto-Altaics, started to merge, converge etc. and develop aseparate linguistic area, still with links to their morenorthern ancestors. Their language, or rather theirSprachbund, would then develop into what I have called the‘grandfather’ of Proto-Indo-European (and of Paleo-European).

A possible direct influence of Uralic (possibly an earlyprecursor of Proto-Saamic, western Uralic) on the language ofthe pre-proto-Basques (i.e. on the mix of a small Paleolithicminority with the ICW and LBK Paleo-European people) could berelated to the northward expansion from the Basque Refugium

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combined with the NW (‘Scandinavian’) Uralics’ southwardexpansion (after the initial expansion to the north, followingthe retreat of the ice cap, and turning left around thenorthern rim of the remnant of the ice cap over Norway andSweden) from the Norwegian coast down to the Netherlands orthereabout. However, there may be chronological problems withsuch an early expansion of Uralics. On the other hand, somegenetic similarities between Saami and Basque people have beenreported, although it seems too early (or too difficult tointerpret) to draw definitive conclusions, so I will not gointo that.

Certain types of (later) megalithic monuments (not formerroofed tombs like dolmens) and hydronyms seem to point to amaximum northern expansion of the Paleo-Europeans (includingthe LBK people) to the northern edge of the English Channel,near the former confluence of the Thames, the Scheldt, theMeuse and the Rhine, in late Doggerland times, i.e. beforeDoggerland became the Dogger Bank, the bottom of a largeshallow part of the North Sea.

3.2. Some suspected Uralic and Altaic elements in Iberian

3.2.1. The -Yi suffix

The value of the Iberian letter shaped like Y is stillsomewhat in doubt, but a wide consensus is growing around thegeneral idea that is a nasal of some kind in most uses. Theattested equivalence of Ybaŕ and U(m)mar (in Latin script)leads to the hypothesis that at least in this context Y mustbe some sort of pre-nasalization (m in this case because ofthe following labial), similar to the well known Bantu feature(like in Swahili ‘mtoto’: ‘child’): mbar. Y without b could be asyllabic n̥, a geminated n or a fortis n - while mb would then bea graphism for syllabic m̥, a geminated m or fortis m. Fromthe Latin transcription of Yl- as nal-, it has been deduced thatY could have had the value of na(i); however, if the l wassyllabic, the combination n̥l̥ would have led to a pronunciationlike nal, with the inserted (epenthetic) a due to pronunciationdifficulties for Romans.

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As to the meaning of the -Yi suffix, Basque ni comes to mind,the first-person singular pronoun (‘I’), but also similarforms with the same or closely related meaning (likepossessive suffix) in various Uralic (and Altaic) - andAmerindian - languages, as cited by Morvan1616. His view isthat there is a subjacent pronoun/personal particle system forthe first and second person with m/ni - k/ti (ni-hi in Basque)as the singular, and m/nu – k/tu (gu-zu in Basque, possibly viagu<bu<mu) as the plural form, and a zero form for the thirdperson, for which deictic-derived words are used (like inGreek: ἀυτός). This clearly tolerates an interpretation of -Yias -ni or -mi. Note that a fortis n could well be the origin ofthe n/d alternation for the first person in the conjugatedBasque verb, in which case the modern ni would be the result oflenition.

So, I presume that –Yi can be the first-person pronoun withverbal roots, and the possessive suffix with nouns. It seemsto follow other suffixes.

3.2.2. The suffix –en

Luis Michelena19 was probably the first to suggest that thisIberian suffix may have the same meaning as the Basque one,namely indicating possession, and thus similar to a ‘proper’possessive genitive. There has not been substantial oppositionto his view ever since.

It is remarkable that this suffix is present in very diverselanguages. Even though apparently absent from Hungarian (whichhas an –é genitive, perhaps related to –en), it is present (as–(e)n) in most Finno-Ugric languages (like Finnish andEstonian), but also in Turkish (i.e. Altaic), and, of course,in the oldest, the so-called ‘weak’ genitive in Germanic (e.g.Ger.‘des Herr-en’, Du. des He(e)r-en). In general, those who believein the special position of Germanic among the Indo-Europeanbranches, usually also believe it was originally the languageof Indo-Europeanized Uralics (by linguistic influence orpopulation mixing) living in S. Scandinavia and/or N. Germany,or a Uralic- (and otherwise) influenced IE language close toItalic in SE Germany (Upper Elbe river). If so, the Germanic –

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en genitive could very well be a loan from Uralic. Germanicshares some typical sound shifts (fricativization) withEuropean Ugric (Hungarian), a fact that may point to aGermanic influence, even though a Paleo-European (LBK)influence is equally possible: G. Forni believes that certainfeatures in Basque, like the loss of initial /p/, is due tofricativization followed by weakening to /φ/and then to zero.

Now, why should -en have the same meaning in Basque and inIberian? Simply because both likely descend from the sameeastern Paleo-European ancestor which was in close contactwith Uralic an Altaic. It could also be a shared featurebetween the ‘grandfather’ of PIE and Uralic and Altaic.

On the other hand, because of the – albeit ‘lateral’ –relationship of Basque and Iberian with PIE, it is possiblethat -n- suffixes in Basque and Iberian are actually related tothe PIE -n- derivative suffixes like e.g. -no, which have ageneral meaning of ‘belonging to’ or ‘having traits of’, whichcould easily lead to the attribution of a possessive genitivemeaning. Maybe a whole series of (non-verbal) -n- suffixesconstitute a shared feature between Basque/Iberian (PE) andUralic/Altaic.

3.2.3. The family of -k- suffixes

The term ‘-k- suffix’ must not be interpreted in a literal sense:it encompasses a series of phonetic variants in variouslanguages, and in various stages of language development ofthe same language. The original core being a root of the type(V1)K(V2), where V stands for a vowel and K stands for a velarlike k, its voiced form g, a fricativized form like an ich- orach-laut, an aspirated form χ (kh) and potentially otherrenditions (uvular (q), glottal, …). Suffixes like e.g. -age or-aga may come under this definition, depending on meaning andorigin.

Modern Basque and Iberian have lots of non-verbal suffixescontaining -k-, and so has PIE, and hence probably PE as well.It seems to be a common feature among the descendants of‘grandfather’ PIE and the original Eurasian agglutinative

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continuum and its extensions into the Americas, since thereare traces of some of these suffixes in Amerindian languages(see below). There is one thing they all have in common: theyseem to indicate origin of some kind (in the case of Iberian:hypothetically), four to be precise:

1. Ablative (in a figurative sense)/genitive. Maybe weshould call it ‘originative’. The prototype is Basque ‘-ko’, which often translates as ‘of’ or ‘from’. Possibly ‘-ku’in Iberian.

2. Ergative subject: this is just an indication of theorigin of the action, i.e. the agent. This mechanism isabundantly clear in German: ‘von’ means both ‘of/from/off’(Latin ‘ab, de’) and ‘by’ (agent, author). Note that Latintoo, uses ab(+ablative) as the preposition for the agent ina passive clause.

3. Partitive: This usage is that something is part of acollection, of a kind, etc. Basque ‘-ki’ in the sense of ‘apiece of’ is a typical example (even though it is not thegrammatical partitive). Cf. Latin ‘ni(hi)l novi’, Fr.‘rien de neuf’, Eng. ‘lots of people’. Iberian ‘saliŕg’ mightbelong to this category (-g being a positionally voiced ‘-k’): if ‘saliŕ’ is a monetary unit, as some tend to accept, itmight be an expression similar to ‘[hundreds] ofdollars’, ‘a lot of money’, or the ancient Greek way ofusing units (in the genitive).

4. Plural: In my opinion this is actually another form ofpartitive. Cf. Fr. ‘beaucoup de choses’, and theindefinite plural in e.g. French and Italian: Fr. ‘deshommes’, It. ‘dei uomini’. In German and Dutch, theoldest plural ending -en coincides with the oldestpossessive genitive ending -en. I think this can safelybe attributed to the same mechanism, albeit using theother, the ‘real genitive’. Actually, I would take theargument even further: it looks like most N. Eurasianlanguages came from an original isolating phase when theyhad no concept of plural forms (the Amerindian Algonquinalso shows signs of a past without, i.e. before, plurals,according to M. Morvan), and so, at a certain stage, somemechanism had to be employed to create plural forms; theuse of partitive constructions is one possibility, ande.g. reduplication is another one seen in some languages

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outside the Eurasian realm, even though there is asuspicion that it may also have existed in the veryoldest form of the precursor of Basque (Lakarra). It istrue that reduplication is more often used to expressintensity than plurality (even in modern colloquialSpanish: ‘caliente-caliente’ means ‘very hot’), but onthe other hand, the close proximity of the concepts of‘many/much’ and ‘very’ is obvious, so much that duringlanguage evolution, the words for those concepts may beconfounded, e.g. Sp. ‘mucho’ and ‘muy’ are both derivedfrom Lat. ‘multu-’, which only indicates multiplicity.The plural ‘-ak’ exists both in Basque (as a shortened formof an older form) and in Hungarian (and other languages,as far away as some Amerindian ones, e.g.Lenape/Delaware), and I strongly believe they have notonly the same morphological origin, but also, at leastinitially, stem from the same underlying mechanism, Imean it might have developed independently, but from thesame underlying idea, something that would also explainwhy not all nor an even larger number of Uralic languageshave chosen this path.I presume it (or a variant ‘-ek’ for dissimilation or vocalharmony) has the same meaning in Iberian, e.g. in ‘gauek’(possibly ‘nights’, maybe in the ergative case?) in thestele from Sinarcas.This reasoning might apply equally to the Germanic -enplurals, supposing that this suffix, of similar‘belonging to’ meaning, was chosen over a -k- suffix.

Since we know too little to enable us to assign values to mostof the Iberian -k- suffixes, I shall abstain from furthercomments, except for one: the Iberian (apparent) pluralgenitive ‘-sken’ might contain a pluralizing ‘-k-‘, unless, ofcourse, it stems from ‘-sko-en’ since it seems to occur mainly inthe context of tribal membership or origin. That would be aninteresting fact, for since Antonio Tovar20 suggested in 1954that the -ko suffix was a not only Indo-European (with theexception of Anatolian), but belonged to an older layer thatencompassed a wider ‘European and Circum-European’ (as hecalled it) linguistic landscape, many others seem to haveaccepted this idea and some even extended it to include the

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compound suffix –sko and its presumed Basque quasi-analogue ‘–zko’ that consists of -ko and the modal ‘-z-‘. Note that theablative-like derivative/adjectivizing suffixes ‘-(s)k-‘ arewidespread in Indo-European : Grm/Du. –isch, Eng. -ish, Slavic -ski/sko, -ko, Grk. -(i)akós, Gallo-Roman –acus, etc. Also in Etruscan:-aχ , like in ‘Rumaχ’ (‘Roman, from Rome’).

In our scheme (see Fig. 1) Paleo-European, the main source ofBasque, descends from the eastern part of the area of thegrandfather of PIE, in close contact with the Eurasiancontinuum, in particular Altaic and Uralic. So, it cannot beruled out entirely that the -k- suffixes in both Proto-Indo-European (seen as the westernmost descendant of thegrandfather of PIE), Paleo-European and Basque actually have acommon origin that might even be a common Eurasian-Amerindiancharacteristic. But it remains unclear why Anatolian IEdoesn’t have any trace of –ko: it may have been lost because ofan innovation that chose another option. It is possible thatoldest PIE didn’t have such suffixes, and that they actuallycame from western Paleo-European.

3.2.4. Egun and Gün

Basque ‘egun’ and Turkish (Altaic) ‘gün’ seem to be related. Bothmean ‘day’. The Turkish word for ‘sun’, ‘güneş’, is derived from‘gün’. According to L. Trask “Barandiarán (1972) suggests anoriginal sense of ‘sun’, ‘light’, which is possible but beyondchecking for Bq. ‘egun’ ”. That would mean that the Basque wordfor ‘sun’, ‘eguzki’, is derived fom ‘egun’ (in its meaning of‘day(light)’) by means of a compound suffix: ‘egu(n)-(e)z-ki’. A perfectparallel: even the derivative suffixes could be related, both‘sun’ words would then mean something like ‘[star/celestial object] of-by-day’. Pure coincidence? I think not. That kind of internalrelationship is too strong to be doubted. And the resemblanceseems too obvious.In Basque there is a perfect analogue for the moon: ‘ilargi’,meaning ‘light (argi), i.e. star, in/of the dark (ilun)’.

I shall limit myself to these examples. There are more thanjust a few more, but these have been or are being studied inseparate papers of mine. Just one example21: Basque-Iberian ili

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(< uli) ‘city’ (originally most likely ‘hillfort’) can belinked etymologically and semantically to Greek π(τ)όλις, Balticpilis, Turkish tepe (´hill’) and Náhuatl (Aztec) tepe-tl(‘mountain’), as well as Sumerian ur and related Semitic formsin Akkadian and Hebrew. This clearly shows the actualexistence of very ancient words (often called atavisms) thatspan enormous distances in space and time. On a smaller scale,I hope to have demonstrated, with this paper, the clear linkof Basque/Iberian with the Urals and beyond.

- o -

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1References:

Forni, Gianfranco: “Evidence for Basque as an Indo-European Language (Full Version)”, The Journal of Indo-European Studies - Volume 41 - Numbers 1& 2, 2013. Online as “Evidence_for_Basque_as_an_Indo-European.pdf” on www.academia.edu

2 Forni, Gianfranco: Evidence for Basque as an Indo-European Language: A Reply to the Critics: The Journal of Indo-European Studies - Volume 41 - Numbers 1& 2, 2013. Online as “Evidence_for_Basque_as_an_Indo-European.pdf” on www.academia.edu

3 Selleslagh-Suykens, Eduard: “The Grandfather, the Uncle and the Cousin of Proto-Indo-European”, on www.academia.edu as “The_Grandfather_the_Uncle_and_the_Cousin.doc” (2016).

4 Rjabchikov, Sergei: “About a Minoan Text on an Egyptian Papyrus” (2013) http://www.academia.edu/3699262/About_a_Minoan_Text_on_an_Egyptian_Papyrus11

5 Sánchis, Juan: “Gibraltar as a barrier”, on: http://languagecontinuity.blogspot.be/2009/04/populations-and-languages-strait-of.html (2009)

6 Gamba, Cristina et al. : “Ancient DNA from an early Neolithic Iberian population supports a pioneer colonization by first farmers” (2011) [uploaded to www.academia.edu by Manuel Edo Benaiges]

7 Hofmanová, Zuzana, Rui Martiniano et al. “Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans” on www.academia.edu

8 Whittaker, Gordon: “The Dawn of Writing and Phoneticism”, in D. Borchers, F. Kammerzell, and S. Weninger (eds.),  Hieroglyphen, Alphabete, Schriftreformen, LingAeg – Stud. mon. 3, Göttingen 2001, pp. 11-50. Also available as The_Dawn_of_Writing_and_Phoneticism.pdf on https://www.academia.edu/17271589/The_Dawn_of_Writing_and_Phoneticism

9 Zilhão, João: “Radiocarbon evidence for maritime pioneer colonization at the origins of farming in west Mediterranean Europe”, PNAS Vol. 98, nº 24, November 20, 2001, p.p. 14180–14185.

10 Zapata, Lydia et al.: “Early neolithic agriculture in the Iberian Peninsula”, JWP,Vol. 18, Nº 4, 2004.4

11 Woudhuizen, Fred: “The Amathus Bilingual Inscription” in : ‘De Hattuša à Memphis’. Jacques Freu in honorem. Édité par Michel Mazoyer et SydneyHervé Aufrère, Cahiers Kubaba, Paris, 2012, 193-199. on www.academia.edu.

12 Hay, Maciamo: “Genetic History of the Spaniards and the Portiguese” https://www.academia.edu/8937422/Genetic_history_of_Spain_and_Portugal

13 Selleslagh-Suykens, Eduard: “Celtic and the Adriatic”, on www.academia.edu as Celtic_and_Adriatic_Revised21102016.doc (2016).

14 Brown, Steven et al.: “Correlations in the population structure of music, genes, and language”, on Open Access journal http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1772/20132245.full.pdf+htmlProceeding B of the Royal Society (Pre-Publication 2013/10/17) Also on www.academia.edu

15 Alday, Alfonso et al.: “Agricultura Neolítica: a propósito de un molino del yacimiento de Atxoste (Alava, País Vasco)” in Munibe Antropologia-Arkeologia nº 65 (2014). Also available from www.academia.edu as “Agricultura_neolitica-libre.pdf”

16 Morvan, Michel : Les origines linguistiques du basque, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 1996

17 Morvan, Michel: Dictionnaire étymologique basque en français-espagnol-anglais

18 Janhunen, Juha: Proto-Uralic - what, where, and when? in The Quasquicentennial of the Finno-Ugrian Society 258, Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia = Memoires de la Societe Finno-Ougrienne 258, Helsinki 2009. 57–78. (sust258_janhunen.pdf on www.academia.edu)16

19 Michelena, Luis: Ibérico -en, in “Actas del I Coloquio sobre lenguas y culturas prerromanas de la Península Ibérica”, 1979, 353-361.

20 Tovar, Antonio: ‘El sufijo -ko: indoeuropeo y circumindoeuropeo’, in Archivio Glottologico Italiano nº 39/1-2(1954), 56-64.

21 Selleslgh-Suykens, Eduard: “Of Hills and Hillforts: From Tepe(-tl) to ΠτόλιςA common Proto-Indo-European - Eurasian/Amerindian ancestral root?”(2017). On www.academia.edu