The surprising fact, however, is that the Strait of Gibraltar has been a barrier for human migration in all ages, especially in prehistory. The main reason for this is geological: the Strait of Gibraltar has remained as it is now for the last 5 million years, even at the various glacial ages, where the sea level lowered significantly all over the world. We also have other types of evidence, e.g. the archaeological record, but the most important confirmation has come from population genetics. I recently read an interesting article about this subject: Bosch et al, 2001, High-Resolution Analysis of Human Y-Chromosome Variation Shows a Sharp Discontinuity and Limited Gene Flow between Northwestern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, American Journal of Human Genetics, 68:1019-1029). In this article, the authors analysed the genetic components of various populations in Spain and Morocco, combined with other evidence from archaeology and history, and reached a series of interesting conclusions. It seems for example that in both cases, the populations of today are mostly the descendants of the people who lived in these areas in the Paleolithic, with a minor impact of migration from the Middle East, probably associated with Neolithic expansion. On the other hand, the genetic components of Iberian and NW African populations show that they come from different origins. Human settlement in Iberia is connected with the expansion of modern humans into Europe from Eurasia or Anatolia, whereas the population of NW Africa is mostly connected with components that originated in the African continent. The gene flow across the Strait of Gibraltar is not considered relevant; it can be estimated at about 5%, and it could, at least partially, show the traces of some recent historical phenomena, like the expansion of the Roman Empire or the Arabic conquest of Iberia. There’s no doubt that the Strait of Gibraltar, as a natural barrier, has played a decisive role in the distribution of human populations, both for modern humans and for older types of hominids. Instead of crossing the 14 km stretch of water that separates Africa from Europe, it took humans a few thousand years to go all the way to the Middle East and eastern Europe until they reached the Iberian Peninsula. This is what I would call a ‘Grand Tour’.Now, what are the linguistic consequences of all this? Is there also a linguistic barrier as well? Has this language barrier existed from prehistoric times? In a previous post I
wrote about the expansion of Arabic as a consequence of the Islamic Empire. The main conclusion I reached was that Arabic dialects are spoken today only in areas where other Afro-Asiatic languages (formerly known as Hamito-Semitic) were already spoken before the arrival of the Arabs, and not in areas where there were other types of languages, e.g. in Persia or Iberia. I’m not sure if anyone had realised this simple fact before, but it looks quite clear in my opinion. The important factor here is affinity. The language of the conquerors (in this case Arabic) has a varying degree of influence on the languages of the conquered depending on the affinity between them. When the Arabs arrived in northern Africa they found Berber-speaking populations, and Berber languages belong to the Afro-Asiatic group. The subsequent process of hybridization led to the linguistic situation that we find in the area today, with a series of dialects which are considered regional variations of Arabic (with the exception of the areas where Berber languages have survived until today). What about Iberia? The languages spoken in this territory were quite different from Arabic; they were connected with Latin, an Indo-European language belonging to the Italic group. The Islamic conquest brought about a process of hybridization, with a significant exchange of linguistic (mainly lexical) material in both directions, as can be seen in the vocabulary of Spanish, Portuguese and other Ibero-Romance languages, and also in many features of the Hispano-Arabic dialect. However, Arabic and Romance languages were always perceived as something different. There were not enough opportunities for hybridization to produce significant hybrids between them; people spoke one of the languages, or both, but not a mixture of them (except perhaps in some local, pidgin-like cases). Another example of the importance of affinity in situations of language contact can be seen in the Roman conquest. The influence of the Romans was linguistically relevant in the Iberian Peninsula, where there was already a background of Indo-European languages, whereas it was rather insignificant in northern Africa, with no Indo-European background (see this post for more details and some maps).It seems therefore that the population/language distribution in NW Africa and Iberia corresponds to a pattern that dates back to Paleolithic times, when modern humans arrived in these areas via different routes. The Strait of Gibraltar, as a natural barrier, was the main factor behind the whole process, limiting the possibilities of genetic or cultural exchange. Later developments, associated with the rise and fall of empires and the expansion of religions, were not strong enough to change the overall picture.
Notes on the illustrations:
- First picture: The Strait of Gibraltar from Spain. Source: OjoDigital (here).
- Second picture: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Alboran Sea. Source: NASA (here).
6 comments:
A very productive reading of that paper with reference to the continuity theory you expound here. Anyway, I must say I find the figures of genetic discontinuity so surprising that one should wait for further studies. One would expect that range before the Arabic invasion, but not after the Middle Ages. It would seem that the bulk of the population is much more sedentary than we used to think.
I agree with you: population genetics is a relatively new field of study, with new techniques being developed constantly, and the conclusions reached by a research team may be disputed by another. It is advisable not to reach too many conclusions from the genetic data if they are not supported by other evidence. In my post, I mentioned the Bosch et al paper as it supports an idea, or an intuition, that I expressed in some previous posts: the fact that significant linguistic differences in Africa and Eurasia may be linked to remote prehistoric events, e.g. the expansion of modern humans in the Paleolithic. The role of the Strait of Gibraltar as a genetic and linguistic barrier is indeed surprising, especially from a modern perspective, but there's significant evidence pointing in this direction.
With ref. to the origin of the Celtic languages/people I would recommend Stephen Oppenheimer's Origins of the British; written by a geneticist (I am unable to judge this aspect of the work)it certainly makes a good case to refute the idea that "the Celts" originated in Central Europe but rather in the southern half of France and Northern Spain. Even more interesting is that he sets out evidence that non-Celtic, almost certainly Germanic languages were spoken in England before the Romans, this tying in with Dr Francis Pryor's views on so-called Dark Age Britain from a purely archaeological perspective.
Thank you for your comment, Ian. (Maybe it corresponds to the previous post, about the Celts, rather than this one, but it doesn't matter).
I haven't read Oppenheimer's book ("Origins of the British") but I'll try to read it soon. Some of his theories about the origins of the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons look quite interesting, and, to some extent, they coincide with things that Mario Alinei and other authors in the context of the Continuity Theory have been saying since the 1990s. I've browsed Oppenheimer's book on the Internet, including the index, and it seems that he's not aware of Alinei's theories, which is a pity. In any case, it is good to see that there is an increasing number of scholars, from various disciplines, trying to revise some traditional notions about European languages and peoples. Colin Renfrew was probably the pioneer in this type of research, paving the way for later developments.
Then, what was the origin of iberians and vasco-aquitanians? Urnenfelden Kultur? The areas inhabited by these peoples don't differ too much form their neighbours based on a genetic point of view.
The great problem for PCT lies here. However, I think that many basque words are phonetic adaptations from IE words (not only from castilian and latin, also form celtoid dialects).
Wich solutions offer contiuists?
Thank you for your comment, Eduardo. The Continuity Theory offers a new framework for the study of languages in prehistory, but it's not a magic wand with a solution for every enigma in historical linguistics.
Xaverio Ballester (a member of the PCT workgroup) has proposed that, when the Iberians arrived in the Iberian Peninsula, Celtic languages were already spoken there. He also proposes that the Iberians, as an intrusive elite, may be connected with the Urnfiled culture. You can take a look at this article, available on-line: http://www.continuitas.com/ballester_hablas.pdf. Let's see an excerpt (p. 16): "la única ecuación lingüística razonable y aceptable que pueda hacerse de la cultura asociada a los campos de urnas en la Península Ibérica es, como decíamos, con el ibérico". Talking about the expansion of the Iberians in the Iberian Peninsula, he says: (pp. 18 and 19): "En todos estos territorios los iberos se encontraron (...) con un grueso poblacional indoeuropeo y de diversas hablas celtoides, componente que fue iberizado más o menos intensamente según el tiempo de contacto y otras diversas circunstancias, pero hay buenos indicios de que en gran parte de ese territorio la iberización fue moderada y superficial, ergo probablemente reciente".
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