# "All Except Basque"? Accurate? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 18, 2008, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-except-basque-accurate/460367 "2008-08-18T02:55:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2008, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-except-basque-accurate/460367/1 "2008-08-18T02:55:36Z")
In a section of "Guns, Germs and Steel " that is principally devoted to the replacement of former indigenous tongues by speakers of Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian languages, Jared Diamond makes the offhand parallel to the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe, where, according to him, they displaced every language except Basque. Is this correct? On the assumption that Finnic peoples came after the initial Indo-European expansion (as we know the Magyars and Turkic peoples did), it sounds plausible. But I’m remembering comments about now-dead languages and cultures which nonetheless survived into more-or-less historical times: the Pelasgians in Greece, the Etruscans in Italy, the Picts (who seem to have finally been defined as a branch of Celtic, hence I-E) in Scotland, and the Iberic people in Spain. Each of these was at one time claimed to have been non-Indo-European. Hence the question. Is Diamond overgeneralizing? Are the counterexamples I mentioned no longer considered not to be I-E? Were there any other surviving groups I’ve missed? (And if anyone knows a time for the Finnic migrations, that would be an interesting sidelight.) ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2008, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-except-basque-accurate/460367/2 "2008-08-18T03:17:57Z")
Don’t the Etruscans count as displaced? Did Diamond specify a date cutoff? Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2008, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-except-basque-accurate/460367/3 "2008-08-18T08:57:18Z")
Finno-Ugric languages ancestral to Lappish, Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, etc., have probably been spoken in the same parts of northeastern Europe continuously for many millennia, long before the Indo-European (Baltic, Germanic, Slavic) languages arrived in the region. The Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic family is tentatively associated with the “Comb Ceramic Culture,” from which artifacts as much as 6000 years old have been found in northeastern Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2008, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-except-basque-accurate/460367/4 "2008-08-18T11:25:41Z")
> **[Proto-Indo-European homeland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_Continuity_Theory)** > > Pontic Steppe > Caucasus > East Asia \*"The Paleolithic Continuity Theory (or PCT) is a proposal formulated in (1996-2000)[1] by Italian linguist Mario Alinei that Indo-European origins can be traced to the Paleolithic era, earlier than estimates accepted in Renfrew’s NDT The PCT posits that the advent of Indo-European languages should be linked to the ‘arrival’[2] of Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia from Africa in the Upper Paleolithic, some 30,000 years ago.[3] Based on lexical periodization results in a timeline 3.5 times deeper than that of Colin Renfrew’s Anatolian hypothesis…"\* So the Indo-Europeans would not have displaced any language ? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2008, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-except-basque-accurate/460367/5 "2008-08-18T14:49:26Z")
Pictish was definitely an Indo-European language, so you can cross that off the list. The Finnic languages originated from Asia, as did the IE languages, but Sami (Lappish) predates Indo-European in northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland. I’m not sure when Finnish and Estonian arrived, but I would be surprised if it was after the IE languages arrived. PS: I don’t think much of Renfrew’s theory, but I don’t have the credentials or the ability to explain why to the board’s satisfaction. It shouldn’t be hard to find a linguist to chime in on why archaeologists’ assumptions about language are sometimes less than reliable. (To be fair, I know several archaeologists whose linguistics are first-rate, as well.) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2008, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-except-basque-accurate/460367/6 "2008-08-18T15:28:35Z")
Basque’s origins are a puzzler for linguists and historians, from all I’ve read. I remember in Arthur C. Clarke’s _2010: Odyssey Two_, several Basque shepherds were astounded when an alien appeared to them, speaking flawlessly in their own fiendishly-complicated language. How _could_ it know?