Suilad,
I thought that I would add a Basque page to my site. Since I am Basque and since so few of people know it even exists. So I thought that it would be nice put the history, stories, and anything else I can find here. Hope you enjoy it. And you can click on the map of the Basque country and that will take you to more pictures that i've added.
-Arien
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History:
Where does one begin to define culture: music, song, dance, language, religion, traditions, cuisine . . .
It is all of these and more. There are some unique aspects of the culture (e.g., the language Euskara which has its own distinct branch on the linguistic tree) but the Basques have also demonstrated their willingness to adopt outside influences (e.g., the fandango or jota which was introduced into the Basque country about a century ago and today nearly serves as the national dance). Basque culture is a "big-small world." Small because of the relative size of Euskal Herria (the Basque Country in Europe which is not more than 100 miles in any direction) yet big because of the abundance of sustained cultural expressions.
Heritage:
Basque heritage is expressed in the way we prepare traditional holiday meals, celebrate religious customs, or relate to family and friends. Some of us speak Basque, or maybe Spanish or French, and travel to the Basque Country regularly. Some of us know how to dance Basque or grew up being members of a club or within a strong Basque atmosphere.
Culture:
Most of us want to know more about our roots and culture, and are proud being part of a relatively small community that wants to keep being and preserving the ancient heritage and traditions our ancestors gave to us and we want to transmit to our children.
However we may express our pride in our heritage, as immigrants or descendants of those who left their Basque homes for a new life in America, we are part of the enduring, strong, and colorful community, Ameriketako Euskal Herria, Basque America.
The Basque Language and Atlantis:
For many years, researchers and scientists have asked themselves where the Basques come from. What is the origin of their culture and language. Today, we know that at least 150,000 years ago people were living in the Basque land. Nevertheless, not much is known about them. Cave paintings in Santimami, Isturitze and Ekain are evidence left by Cro-Magnon that lived and adapted to the zone.
What I will endeavor to show here is that the various dialects of what I believe was the original language of the Atlanteans accompanied the Cro-Magnon people as they swept into the western portions of Europe and Africa. The remains of this phenomenon exist to this day in what I call the Berber-Ibero-Basque Language Complex. This complex stretched from Morocco in North Africa, across Gibraltar into the Iberian peninsula, up into the Dordogne Valley of France, and northward to the British Isles. If such an Atlantic language did exist, we will have identified the Atlantean language, at least provisionally. At the very least, we can ask if such a unified, widespread language did not come from Atlantis, from where did it come? Professional anthropologists have already postulated, in a classic work on European ethnology, that the Basque people of the Pyrenees Mountains (northern Spain/southern France) speak a language inherited directly from Cro-Magnon Man (Ripley, 1899). To give only two examples of why they made the above postulation, the Basque word for knife means literally "stone that cuts," and their word for ceiling means "top of the cavern" (Blanc, 1854). Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn (1915-1923), declared that the Cro-Magnon people of the Stone Age left two cultural "relics" that survived into modern times: (1) the Berber-speaking Guanches of the Canary Islands, and (2) the unique Basque language of western Europe. And the distinguished British scholar Michael Harrison once wrote: "In support of the theory that Basque, if not an autochthonous language, is at least one of the most primitive languages of Europe, in the sense of its being here before any of the existing others, is the fact that Basque . . . is still a language with no proven congeners" (Harrison, 1974). If Basque was indeed the language of Cro-Magnon Man, it must have once been spoken over a much larger area of Europe than it is now. Today it stands isolated into two tiny linguistic "islands," surrounded by languages totally alien in vocabulary, syntax, and grammatical structure. According to Harrison, who has done his homework, Basque did indeed cover a far greater area than it does today. He points out that this fact was recorded by the Carthaginians and Romans (Harrison, 1974). But what about the little-known Iberian language (generally believed to be related to the Berber language of North Africa)? The defunct Iberian language, known to us only through inscriptions, was once spoken throughout the Iberian peninsula. Through Iberian language specialist William J. Entwhistle (1936) we learn that this language is also related to the modern Basque language.
