Tag: Catalonia

European hydrotoponymy (II): Basques and Iberians after Lusitanians and “Ligurians”

bronze-age-languages-western-europe

The first layer in hydrotoponymy of Iberia is clearly Indo-European, in territories that were occupied by Indo-Europeans when Romans arrived, but also in most of those occupied by non-Indo-Europeans.

Among Indo-European peoples, the traditional paradigm – carried around in Wikipedia-like texts until our days – has been to classify their languages as “Pre-Celtic” despite the non-Celtic phonetics (especially the initial -p-), because the same toponyms appear in areas occupied by Celts (e.g. Parisii, Pictones, Pelendones, Palantia); or – even worse – just as “Celtic”, because of the famous -briga and related components. This was evidently not tenable at the … Read the rest “European hydrotoponymy (II): Basques and Iberians after Lusitanians and “Ligurians””

European hydrotoponymy (I): Old European substrate and its relative chronology

old-european-hydronymy-toponymy

These first two posts on Old European hydro-toponymy contain excerpts mainly from Indoeuropeos, iberos, vascos y sus parientes, by Francisco Villar, Universidad de Salmanca (2014), but also from materials of Lenguas, genes y culturas en la Prehistoria de Europa y Asia suroccidental, by Villar et al. Universidad de Salamanca (2007). I can’t recommend both books hardly enough for anyone interested in the history of Pre-Roman peoples in Iberia and Western Europe.

NOTE. Both books also contain detailed information on hydrotoponymy of other regions, like Northern Europe, the Aegean and the Middle East, with some information about Asia, apart … Read the rest “European hydrotoponymy (I): Old European substrate and its relative chronology”

Population substructure in Iberia, highest in the north-west territory (to appear in Nature)

A manuscript co-authored by Angel Carracedo, from the University of Santiago de Compostela, and (always according to him) pre-accepted in Nature, will offer more insight into the population substructure of Spain, based on autosomal DNA.

Carracedo’s lecture about DNA (in Galician), including his summary of the paper (from december 2017):

Some of the points made in the video:

  • The study shows a situation parallelling – as expected – the expansion of Spanish Medieval kingdoms during the Reconquista (and subsequent repopulation).
  • In it, the biggest surprise seems to be the greater substructure found in Galicia, the north-western Spanish
… Read the rest “Population substructure in Iberia, highest in the north-west territory (to appear in Nature)”