Aquitanians

The Aquitanians (Latin: Aquitani) were a people living in what is now southern Aquitaine and southwestern Midi-Pyrénées, France, called Gallia Aquitania by the Romans in the region between the Pyrenees, the Atlantic ocean, and the Garonne, present-day southwestern France. They were an ancient non-Indo-European population that lived in the northern slopes of the Pyrenees. They spoke the Aquitanian language, related to Old Basque. Classical authors such as Julius Caesar and Strabo clearly distinguish them from the other peoples of Gaul and Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula). With the process of Romanization, in the centuries of Roman Empire, they adopted the Latin Language (Vulgar Latin) and Roman civilization. Their old language, the Aquitanian language, was the substrate for the Gascon language (one of the Romance languages) spoken in Gascony.

At the time of the Roman conquest, Julius Caesar, who defeated them in his campaign in Gaul, describes them as making up a distinct part of Gaul: