Some historians consider that the Basques are the only descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Europe before the invasion of the Indo-European peoples. The recent studies on Archaeogenetics, which try to unveil the human migrations of antiquity, point to a European colonization of individuals after the last Ice Age (20,000 years ago) from the current France and Spain and whose closest mitochondrial DNA is the one of the present-day Basques. This assumption has vivified the theory about the Basque people as the last stronghold of a pre-Indo-European continent where different languages of the Basque stock were spoken. According to the works above mentioned, the climate became warmer since 16.000 B.C., what allowed the former Basques, known as well as 'Proto-Basques', to spread throughout Europe. Their expansion started in the northern third of the Iberian peninsula and the southern half of France, the region where the Franco-Cantabric civilization (according to this theory, the predecessor of the current Basque culture) was located, and extended to north up to Russia and Scandinavia and to south up to Tunisia in the north of Africa.
The research on the European prehistoric toponymy points to a proto-Basque expansion from the Pyrenean area, according to Theo Vennemann (Professor of Theoretical Linguistics and German studies at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich). He states that there are names of rivers, valleys, lakes and mountains whose roots are not of Indo-European origin and that they are similar to Basque words or roots. The expansion entailed the spread of Proto-Euskara or prehistoric Euskara throughout the continent, given the fact that the former Basques gave names to the geographical features they found on their way. The Basque substratum (1) in the European toponymy is abundant, according to Vennemann.
(1) Linguistic substratum: it is the influence made by a language over another one that settles in its territory.
The Basque word 'ibai' (river) gives rise to the term 'ibar' (meadow) and these roots are found in many European rivers. There is the Ibar river in Serbia and Montenegro. The Ibra crosses Hessen (Germany) and further south, there are two Ebranch rivers, as well as several Eberbäche rivers. At the base of the hills in the Alps, we can find the Ebesberg. In Austria, there is the Ybbs as well as the city to which the river gave its name. In France, there are the towns of Ivergny, Iverny, Yvré-l'évèque, Ébréon, Évrune, Ebersheim and Yvry-en-Montagne. In relation to the Basque Country, there are Ibarra, Ibarrola, Ibarrekolanda, Ibardin and Aranibar. Beside those examples we must remember the Spanish Ebro river, whose name comes from the pre-Roman term Iber and that gave name to an entire people, the Iberians, as well as to the Iberian peninsula.
The Basque term 'ur' means 'water'. Therefore, related names can be found like Urola, Urura (Basque Country), Urofia, Huriel (France), Ourte (Belgium), Urwis (Poland), Ura (Russia), Aurach, Auerbach, Urach, Urbach (Germany), Urula (Norway).
Once the Basque word '(h)aran' (valley) is taken as a linguistic root, Theo Venneman finds as well many toponyms in Europe, like Arundel (England), Arendal (Norway and Sweden). Arnach, Arnsberg, Arnstern, Aresburg and Ahrensburg (Germany). There is also Ohrenbach, which was called Arenbach in the past, as well as the Bavarian sites of Arnstein and the formerly known as Marnstein. In Spain, there is the Aran Valley (province of Lleida). On the other hand, the Basque root -Iz (which means 'water') is present in the names of about two hundred European rivers among Norway, Italy and Russia.
The linguist and researcher of the Proto-Basque language, Joseba Andoni Lakarrra, rejects this theory, since he thinks that Vennemann uses the current Basque grammar, phonetics and roots without taking account of the fact that present-day Euskara is very different from the language spoken in prehistory. Lakarra answers as well that the agglutination used in the lexical comparisons of Venneman does not correspond to prehistoric Euskara, since there is evidence to suggest that the Basque language was not agglutinative or had little agglutination, according to the research on prehistoric Proto-Basque.
As an example of this, Vennemann uses the article '-a' in his comparisons, when it did not exist in Proto-Euskara. This article, which comes from the Basque demonstrative 'har', is supposed to be introduced in the Basque grammar during the Middle Ages due to the influence exerted by the Romance languages.
Not only Vennemann but other linguists have found as well some evidences of Basque substratum in very conservative languages throughout Europe. Later, we will know more about this interesting study.
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