Aquitanian language

The Aquitanian language was spoken in ancient Aquitaine (approximately between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, the region later known as Gascony) before the Roman conquest and, probably much later, until the Early Middle Ages.

Archaeological, toponymical and historical evidence strongly suggest that it was a Vasconic language or group of languages that represent a precursor of the Basque language.Trask, L. The History of Basque Routledge: 1997 ISBN 0-415-13116-2 The most important of this is a series of votive and funerary texts in Latin which contain about 400 personal names and 70 names of gods.

History

Aquitanian and its related descendant, Basque, are commonly thought to be a remnant of the languages spoken in Western Europe before the arrival of Indo-European speakers. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza's studies of the genetic history of Europe identified a cline of genes with highest frequencies in the Basque country, and lower levels beyond the area of Iberia and Southern France. Cavalli-Sforza describes this weakest of the five patterns he obtained as isolated remnants of the pre-Neolithic population of Europe. It corresponds roughly to the geographical spread of rhesus negative blood types. The conclusion that the Basques are a genetic isolate has become a widely discussed but also controversial conclusion. Aquitanian origins may be...
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