Uniqueness of the Basques
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Now, an international research team led by UPF has confirmed that the Basques' genetic uniqueness is the result of genetic continuity since the Iron Age, characterized by periods of isolation and scarce gene flow, and not its external origin in respect to other Iberian populations.
The study, led by David Comas, principal investigator at UPF and at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE: CSIC-UPF), has involved the most comprehensive geographic sampling to date of the Basque population, with over 600,000 genetic markers throughout the genome for each individual.
The result of the multidisciplinary study, which involved a team of linguists and geneticists, reveals in the journal Current Biology that the cultural barrier of the language promoted the isolation of the Basque population from subsequent population contacts, such as the influence of the Roman empire or the Islamic occupation of the peninsula, and even acted as an internal barrier in some cases due to the use of dialects.
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David Comas, full professor of Biological Anthropology at the UPF Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (DCEXS), details that "for example, we find no influences from North Africa which are appreciated in most populations of the Iberian Peninsula, and neither do we find traces of other migrations such as the Romans."
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-unique...-revealed.html
Uniqueness of the Basques is due to continuity from the Iron Age with lack of geneflow that the rest of Iberia have had.
Here's the study.
Highlights
- 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
https://www.cell.com/current-biology...822(21)00349-3