Aquitanian language
| Aquitanian | |
|---|---|
| Native to | France, Spain |
| Region | West of the Pyrenees |
| Extinct | by the Early Middle Ages (except in the Northern Basque Country) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
|
Linguist list
|
xaq |
| Glottolog | None |
The Aquitanian language was spoken on both sides of the western Pyrenees in ancient Aquitaine (approximately between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, the region later known as Gascony) and in the areas south of the Pyrenees in the valleys of the Basque Country before the Roman conquest. It probably survived in Aquitania until the Early Middle Ages.
Archaeological, toponymical, and historical evidence show that it was a Vasconic language or group of languages that represent a precursor of the Basque language. The most important pieces of evidence are a series of votive and funerary texts in Latin which contain about 400 personal names and 70 names of gods.
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. Cavalli-Sforza's conclusion that the Basques are a genetic isolate as well as a linguistic one has since been widely discussed and sometimes challenged.
It may be possible to trace the Aquitanians more or less directly back to the Chalcolithic culture of Artenac, but the age of the Aquitanian language, and of the Basque language, is uncertain. Some contend that Basque dates to the age of metal; others, citing the derivation of words for "knife" (aizto), "ax" (aizkora) and "hoe" (aitzur) from the word for "stone" (haitz), conclude that the language dates to the Stone Age or Neolithic period, when those tools were made of stone.
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