So my Dad did a DNA test to discover our genetic origins. Turns out, through the patrilineal line, we are 9% Iberian. Web research doesn't give much about the Iberians, or what it means to be Iberian. I'm mostly trying to figure out if they are the same as the basques, or related to the basques. Anybody know anything about this? Don't bother quoting wiki, I already read that. Didn't really answer my question. Oh, and Hi! It's been a while since I visited.
I suggest your dad ask the people who did the DNA test what they mean. I understand why Wiki isn't much help.
Of course you know that Iberians may include the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Catalans and the Basque. If you are interested in the Basque, Mark Kurlansky (a Polish-American) wrote a very readable and interesting book about them. He theorizes that Newfoundland (its waters) were their secret cod fishing ground from several centuries before Columbus sailed west. So it as they who "discovered" America (or Canada anyway). perhaps that is so. I enjoyed Kurlansky's book, but he fairly gushes about the Basque. Okay, they're fine human beings and they may have discovered America and been brave fisherfolk, but the way Kurlansky goes on I fully expected to reach the back page and see a form inviting me to order my own personal Basque today. So you're 9%I berian? Good for you! I'm 50% bonafide German, and the good kind that fought for America and the Allies in two world wars and understand that the high points of world musical culture are Beethoven and Mozart. Hah! Let's see you Iberians write music like that! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Historians refer to the earlier pre-Celtic and pre-Roman population of what is now Spain and Portugal as the 'Iberians'. I don't know very much about them. There has been a lot of archaeological research into their traces though, so there's lots more information out there. My impression is that their languages weren't Indo-European. Again I'm not an authority on this, but I'd say yes, they are probably related. That relationship might be distant though, since today's Basques have undergone some 2500 years of history since the time of the Iberians. What's more, my guess is that there probably were a number of different Iberian ethnic groups in different parts of Spain and Portugal with different (though related) languages and cultures. Today's Basques might not be the descendents of all of them. But just because most of their languages no longer exist doesn't mean that the Iberians who spoke them disappeared and left no descendants. What happened was that the Romans took over the Iberian peninsula in the first and second centuries BCE, created Roman provinces there, and the locals gradually took up speaking Latin and adopted Roman culture. The transition probably took several hundred years, but people eventually ended up thinking of themselves as Romans. Today's Spanish, Catalan and Portugese languages are the descendants of the Latin vernacular. So no doubt the genes of many of the Iberian peoples are most common today among the Spanish and Portugese. The Iberians were a major component of what went into forming those more modern peoples.
Sounds like a cool book! I may have to check that out! Wish I could say that my german ancestros were the good kind. Problem is, we have no idea who my paternal grandfathers dad was. My aunt has been trying for years to find out. Which was what led my Dad to do the DNA test. Then again, my grandfather was born in 1910, so obviously, the family was already here in USA. I'd give just about anything to find out who the man was!
