Armenian Origins Of Basque and Etruscan?

Altair

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I finished recently Armenian Origins of Basque: The Linguistic Verdict by Vahan Setyan and found it quite intriguing. So here are some excerpts:

By the end of the 19th century the English linguist Edward Spencer Dodgson (1857-1922) stumbled on an intriguing discovery. A renowned scholar of Basque studies, Dodgson had begun learning the Armenian language to expand his linguist horizon. The result was quite unexpected: after only two months, Dodgson noted that Armenian and Basque words are practically identical.

In the Village of Isaba he writes down a local legend which said that Isaba was founded by Armenians, who were the first inhabitants of Navarro and ancestors of the Basque. According to the legend, the leader of the Basque people was named Haitor. He came from Armenia with seven sons and in their honor, he founded seven settlements in Navarro. It also said that the Basques' Armenian ancestors knew the secret of metal processing.

He demonstrates that the Armenians founded the city of Tarragona, on the Spanish coast of the Mediterranean.

In his study of the history of Valencia, published in 1610, he writes that following the Flood the patriarch Tubal and his people, who landed on the eastern coast of Spain, spoke Armenian. Furthermore, Escolano describes the precise locations where legend says the first Armenian inhabitants of Spain were buried. Today those locations, mainlyin Catalonia, comprise a sting of churches, indicating that these places have been deemed sacred since ancient times.

The scientists have developed the most complete list to date of Basque linguist parallels, including close to 1,000 shared words and grammatical elements. Indeed, research has demonstrated that one can form a great number of sentences in either Armenian or Basque that would be mostly understood by speakers of either language.

The Armenian and Basque-Country highlands share toponymic words, In the past, such parallels were not to hold any scientific interest, based on the fact that groups of regions shared words that sounded the same but different meanings. However, the Armenian-toponymic parallels have an important peculiarity: in most cases they mean the same thing.

As the archeological evidence points out to the appearance of the Armenoids on the Pyrenean Peninsula in the middle of the third millennium BC, it would be only logical to assume that the Basques are Armenoid in origin. The hypothesis is further bolstered by recent genetic research, which brings to this story an interesting and unexpected twist. It is a known fact that the Armenians have a marrow-donor problem. In other words, Only an Armenian marrow can be transplanted in an Armenian person. That is why scientists have been busy researching for donor tissue compatible with Armenians. What they have discovered is that Basque marrow-tissue composition is the closest to the Armenian one.

For instance, in the village of Isba he discovered a local legend about how the village was founded by the Annenians, the first inhabitants of Navarra, who were considered as the ancestors of Basque people. The legend speaks of Haytor, as the leader of Basque, who arrived there from Armenia with his seven sons. Only in Armenian haytor means "Armenian grandchild".

It can be argued that Basque etymological root is 'eusk' and is directly associated with the Armenian term - 'vosk' and 'voski'- as in "gold". The Armenian term - 'voskan', meaning, "having gold" is parallel with Baske - Baskon - Vaskon - morphology.

Further doubt was raised between Basque and Georgian parallels when lexical coincidences were noticed. Cognates with Basque have been sought among several languages, although a genetic relationship between the Northern and Kartvelian groups remains unproven (Kerziouk, 2015). Moreover, in numerous cases proto-Basque forms have not been matched with proto-Georgian forms, making the coincidences anachronistic.

The Carpathian Mountain is more than a 1500 km mountain range that seems like an extensive 'wall barrier'. Its etymology is derived from Annenian - 'kar' + 'pat', literally meaning 'stone wall' or 'rock wall' and the relief map of the mountain range reveals this description.

Our biggest concern about his paper (Campbell, 2007) was:

The omission of evidence that would point Etruscan to Armenian (Ellis,1861), in his Armenian Origins of the Etruscans, illustrating a far older relationship than its association with Greek. "...Thracians were themselves from the Caspian to the Alps and Tyrrhenian Sea, and carrying an Armenian dialect into Etruria and Rhoetia." (Ellis (1870). Asiatic Affinities of Old Italians, p. 4.)

It is not surprising that Ellis (1886) examined the associations between Basque and Etruscan with the utility of Armenian elements. He argued that a language akin to the Armenian was used in Etruria and the Etruscans, derived from Lydia. He further posited that "the Armenians, like the Celts, are now few in number. They belong once to a longer extent of a country where they spread westward from Armenia to Italy under the names of Phrygians, Thracians Pelasgians, Etruscans and also spread to other locations.

H.V. Hilprecht (1859-1925), a German-American Assyriologist who conducted extensive excavations and interpretations of Hittite inscriptions said: "Before we were able to make any definite statement as to the reading of the inscriptions, we could have surmised that the Hittite language was Armenian. This is a surmise no longer; the actual reading of the inscriptions has transformed it into a certainty. For almost everything that we know in the Hittite tongue is Armenian.

We certainly can notice that the Araratian Kingdom (Urartu) was the direct continuation of the Kingdom of Mitanni and in the same geographical vicinity. Urartian ancient texts and the Urartian vocabulary reveal that 70% of the root words are Armenian words. We can accept the notion that the grammar of any language changes over the time, but the pronunciation less so, leaving Armenian and Biainian (Urartian) pronunciations intact and being the same.

Ayvazyan (2015) found that a comparison of the Biainian (Urartian) and Armenian languages revealed that (a) the larger part of the Biainian lexicon that has reached us and is comprehensible has its parallel in Armenian, (b) the majority of those common words (roots) are native to Armenian being of IE origin in its volume and linguistic value, (c) the Armenian constituent represents the base of Biainian and it cannot be the result of borrowings and interactions and (d) a certain stratum of Hurrian exists both in the Biainian lexicon and some grammatical elements which, nevertheless, concedes both quantitatively and qualitatively to the Armenian language.

Interestingly, the methods and works of Martinez-Areta (2013) have revealed that the sound correspondences for all consonants and vowels in a wide range of roots, stems, and words, including basic vocabulary indicate ProtoBasque (PB) and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) to be related. More accurately, not the suggestion of PB descending from PIE, but the hypothesis that two ancient languages descend from the same, more ancient mother language.

Leila Stepanian, Professor of Armenian language in Armenia, has found extensive parallels of Armenian linguistic strata within Polynesian languages.

According to Michelena (1964), the Aquitanian words constitute the most ancient testimony of the Basque language. Trask (1995, 1997) assert that "probably all Basque scholars now accept that Basque descended more or less directly from Aquitanian." Campbell (2008) provides a list of Aquitanian words to compare Basque such as Aq. arixo "oak" and Basq. 'haritz' "oak", and Aq. ausci "gold" and Basq. 'euske(ra)' "gold". That is indeed interesting because in Armenian harich means "oak" and voski means "gold". Thus, we have Arm. harich - Aq. arixo - Basq. haritz and the Arm. voksi - Aq. ausci - Basq. euske(ra) connection, a critical dimension that is vital for consideration...

Aquitanian is to be the language that either Basque descended from or Aquitanian and Basque shared a common source (see Trask 1995, Trask 1997), where Luis Michelena and Gorrochategui (1985,1989) also found Aquitanian-Iberian connection that could be shared with Basque. Now, Pyrenees hold a key in all this because the majority of the of Aquitanian inscriptions that have been found north of the Pyrenees were of Aquitanian mold whereas those that werefoundin the southern territory were Basque (Vasconic).

Greeks called the 'Pelasgians' as the people who ruled the lands before they moved in the Aegean. Naturally, the original Pelasgians would not speak the Hellenic language. One of the biggest credits given to the Pelasgians is their establishment of the Mycenaean Civilization 4000 years ago.The problem is that no etymological explanation is satisfactory or even comes close to explaining even the name of these people. Even the Greeks mentioned that the Pelasgians did not speak Greek. Various have considered the Pelasgians culture to be Neolithic... Greeks in their writing do show their admiration to the Pelasgian civilization...

We certainly can argue that the affinities that have been found between Armenians, Pelasgians, Lydians, Phrygians and Etruscan by several historians and linguists including Ellis (1861) and Drews (1994) and they should not be overlooked.

Some images from the book:

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I can't really judge how close Basque and Armenian languages are and apart from the mentioned legend that a leader of Basques came from Armenia with his 7 sons there is little to suggest that Basque actually originated from Armenian language. It may just as well be that both languages are derivatives of the Atlantean language or its dialects and both peoples might be survivors of the Flood aka Atlantis destruction (note that present day Basques and Armenians inhabit mountainous regions or highlands).
 
As the archeological evidence points out to the appearance of the Armenoids on the Pyrenean Peninsula in the middle of the third millennium BC, it would be only logical to assume that the Basques are Armenoid in origin.

Very interesting. It also cross-references with this thread's article:


Between about 2500-2000 BC, the researchers observed the replacement of 40% of Iberia's ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with ancestry from the Pontic Steppe, a region in what is today Ukraine and Russia. Interestingly, the findings show that in the Iron Age, "Steppe ancestry" had spread not only into Indo-European-speaking regions of Iberia but also into non-Indo-European-speaking ones, such as the region inhabited by the Basque . The researchers' analysis suggests that present-day Basques most closely resemble a typical Iberian Iron Age population, including the influx of "Steppe ancestry," but that they were not affected by subsequent genetic contributions that affected the rest of Iberia. This suggests that Basque speakers were equally affected genetically as other groups by the arrival of Steppe populations, but retained their language in any case. It was only after that time that they became relatively isolated genetically from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula[...].
 
If the Goebekli Tepe culture was influenced or organized by Atlantean survivors, then it is possible that their language survived in Armenia. Armenia used to be much bigger and geographically very close to the general Goebekli Tepe area.
 
A very interesting little book! @Ollie lent it to me, and I couldn't put it down. It's a bit pricey, but worth it. (We have a copy if anybody wishes to borrow it.)

I kept thinking of Zoroaster, and a possible Neolithic link, since Armenian pretty much matches the area.

Linguistically speaking, the parallels are VERY interesting. IMO, toponyms (names of places) usually carry the few clues about ancient languages that may be most trustworthy, more so sometimes than archaeological findings. I say this because very often, one reads that such and such tablet or vase or whatever was found, written in Language X, but later on they find out that the writing system that was used was not the spoken language (for example, texts found in Arabic script, that turned out to be old Spanish written in Arabic). And then we have what Carme Huerta shared in her book, about toponyms being split into particles, and what they each mean. I made a video about it and the transcript is here, if anyone is interested.

Regarding common vocabulary between Basque and Armenian, this book is quite striking. To my knowledge, and opposite to what is claimed, there are way less sure parallels in the whole field of etymology for ascribing a Latin origin to Romance languages, or an Anglo-Saxon origin to English, not to mention the VERY tenuous claims about what Indo-European looked like based on "cognates" (similar words). The whole field is plagued with assumptions, results of similarities that nobody can explain (and which maybe have more to do with sounds?! Also in my videos on that link). I don't know enough about genetics, but I think it's the same: From two similar genes, scientits hypothesize about earlier genes. But nothing there proves an actual evolution. For languages, similarities may indicate that they are "cousins", not "mother-daughter" (e.g. Latin vs Romance Languages), which alters the whole timeline and family tree.

That's not to say that languages don't "evolve" (and the same goes for genetic mutations, etc.). But the changes are sometimes infinitesimal compared to the overall complexity of a language. I see a big tendency towards simplification and languages dying, rather than the reverse. That is, I imagine that in the past there were way MORE languages, not less.

A bad point for this book is that even though the author claims that there are grammatical parallels between Armenian and Basque, he doesn't cover them in any detail. It's a pity, because those are way more resistant over time than the lexicon. I wish he had demonstrated it, but I'll dig more into it to see if it's true. I don't think one can deduce a real "relationship" between languages until one has shown similarities in lexicon, sound systems, grammatical structures AND culture/myths, etc. I suspect he is right in this case, though.

As to Basque per se, there is a whole list of possible "sister languages", which has never been proven, but is definitely curious: Georgian, Armenian, Iberian, and even Dogon (a small language in Mali). Coincidentally, many of those are said to be isolates (dogon, basque...), or the last in one branch of a family tree (Armenian). But linguists are so convinced of the Darwinian tree model, that they very rarely look for parallels across branches or families. That's why this book is particularly good. At least he dares go there! In some studies, the parallels are very convincing too. And then, there are a few languages that show structural parallels but have no known common history/genetics, like in the case of some Amerindian languages which are also agglutinative.

Anyway, apologies for the rambling. The main thing, I think, is that books like this one can provide big clues, OSIT, and the link to Armenia is super interesting. But one needs to be careful about coming up with one single conclusion, given the fact that all that remains is in written form, and that we have no way to know how languages sounded back then, or how many there were. A script may be used by multiple languages (e.g the latin alphabet nowadays).

So, my main question is: how did language begin??? Did many of them "sprout" (for lack of a better term) at the same time, taught to humans by something or somebody, "downloaded" from the information field, etc? Or is it really possible that there was a "common mother tongue"? If the latter is possible, it still doesn't answer the question of where it came from. To me, the former sounds more plausible, just like you find so many different and visible unrelated cultures building the same kinds of temples at around the same time, or myths about a Deluge, etc. But how and why? :nuts:
 
I forgot something: one interesting fact about Basque and Armenian both (and there are others), is the resilience they have shown. In spite of all odds, invasions and what-not, they are VERY old (Basque is believed to date from at least the Neolithic). I sometimes wonder what makes it so. Just geographical isolation alone wouldn't do it, I think. There is something intrinsic to the language (and the way its speakers think, which is VERY different in Basque), that is maybe intrinsic to the speakers themselves too? I don't know. But some languages sure are resistant, while others are very vulnerable regardless of the number of speakers.
 
I kept thinking of Zoroaster, and a possible Neolithic link, since Armenian pretty much matches the area.

Linguistically speaking, the parallels are VERY interesting. IMO, toponyms (names of places) usually carry the few clues about ancient languages that may be most trustworthy, more so sometimes than archaeological findings. I say this because very often, one reads that such and such tablet or vase or whatever was found, written in Language X, but later on they find out that the writing system that was used was not the spoken language (for example, texts found in Arabic script, that turned out to be old Spanish written in Arabic). And then we have what Carme Huerta shared in her book, about toponyms being split into particles, and what they each mean. I made a video about it and the transcript is here, if anyone is interested.

...

Anyway, apologies for the rambling. The main thing, I think, is that books like this one can provide big clues, OSIT, and the link to Armenia is super interesting. But one needs to be careful about coming up with one single conclusion, given the fact that all that remains is in written form, and that we have no way to know how languages sounded back then, or how many there were. A script may be used by multiple languages (e.g the latin alphabet nowadays).
Whilst reading the book, myself, Zoroaster was what kept cropping up in my mind too. There is also the idea (that arose in another book, read prior to this) that Zoroaster influenced people (and even much, much earlier people) travalled westwards from the same area, and one of the stopping off points was the Basquelands; and from there, they possibly moved on to the Celtic lands.
 
This presentation of the book containing several bits of information about the history and possible origins of the language and inhabitants of the Basque Country. No one seems to have any reference as to where the etymological root of eusk- from which Euskadi, Euskara, Euskera, Bizkaya, Vasconia, Gascony, Gascony, etc. derive.

One linguist suggested that it could perhaps be Celtic from bhar-s-, "up" also in Armenian; another linguist proposed that the word euskara is a derivative of esan "to say" and (k)ara, where (k) is "way" and 'ara' means "to do something".
In Armenian 'asel' means "to say" and 'ara' means "to do".
In any case, I think it is worth watching this video to get a general idea of what this book is about and the connections between the two languages.
 
In any case, I think it is worth watching this video to get a general idea of what this book is about and the connections between the two languages.

Thank you Tristan! I watched it at double the speed, so I may have missed something. But in the lecture, he does mention some curious coincidences about myths (not a lot to go by but still more than some other "related languages"). He also mentions the genetic findings linking Armenian people with Basque and Celtic peoples, which I forgot to mention earlier.

One thing that I don't recall him mentioning in the book, but which he HAS to explain to this audience, is that a lot of the words he compared are from Old Armenian, not understood by modern speakers. That may be an important detail. Not that it negates his theory, not at all. But he should have been more specific about it, I think.

Still, there is hardly anything about grammar, and that's a pity. But supposedly Vahan Sarkisian, the researcher to whom he dedicated his book, did. We'd have to see from those texts if the parallels are really strong or not (and the same for myths and such). Otherwise, from vocabulary alone, I'm not 100% convinced, because there are so many "proven theories" with just vocabulary that HAVE to be wrong. OSIT (strongly;-))

The comparison sure does seem to have merit, though... More digging would be necessary, especially because we may be talking about different waves of migrations (thousands of years apart), and like I wrote before, not necessarily the same language exactly, but "cousins" too.

One of the many problems I see is that it depends greatly on how we divide these families and "relatives". Nobody agrees on the topic, but most privilege lexicon. If you compare grammatical structures, lexicon or phonologies, you get totally different trees. And go determine the exact degree of complexity that a language has! There are many variables. For example, some "primitive" (simple) languages grammatically speaking have a very complex sound system, and viceversa. There is no reasonable ranking to attribute more importance to sound than to grammar or viceversa. Which is more "complex"? Nobody knows. So, it's difficult to find clues there as well. Some small populations with "primitive" societies have a super complex grammar. So... go figure!
 
Still, there is hardly anything about grammar, and that's a pity. But supposedly Vahan Sarkisian, the researcher to whom he dedicated his book, did. We'd have to see from those texts if the parallels are really strong or not (and the same for myths and such). Otherwise, from vocabulary alone, I'm not 100% convinced, because there are so many "proven theories" with just vocabulary that HAVE to be wrong. OSIT (strongly;-))
Several articles by Vahan Sarkisian are available online (all in Spanish). They can be downloaded as PDF by clicking on "Texto completo".
 
I found all three books by Robert Ellis mentioned by Vahan Setyan in his book:

Ellis, R. (1886). Etruscan and Basque Languages. Truber & Co.,Ludgate Hill. London.
Ellis, R. (1870). Asiatic Affinities of Old Italians. Trubner & Co.
Ellis, R. (1861). Armenian Origins of the Etruscans. Parke, Son and Bourn.

I edited them a bit: made them searchable, removed white margins for better readability on e-readers and added table of contents.

If anybody is interested, they can be downloaded here.
 
I found all three books by Robert Ellis mentioned by Vahan Setyan in his book:

Ellis, R. (1886). Etruscan and Basque Languages. Truber & Co.,Ludgate Hill. London.
Ellis, R. (1870). Asiatic Affinities of Old Italians. Trubner & Co.
Ellis, R. (1861). Armenian Origins of the Etruscans. Parke, Son and Bourn.

I edited them a bit: made them searchable, removed white margins for better readability on e-readers and added table of contents.

If anybody is interested, they can be downloaded here.
Thank you, Altair! When I was young, a long time ago, I was fixated on Armenia and the Anatolian area as one of the 'cradles of man'. I'm quite pleased to be able to download these. :flowers:
 
After reading a little bit about Armenian grammar, these points stood out, FWIW, and could corroborate Setyan's theory:

1. Both Armenian and Basque privilege the SOV structure (meaning the verb goes at the end). Thanks to cases, the word order can be flexible, but it's still the preferred sentence "logic".
2. The both use a lot of suffixes (usually prefixes are more common).
3. Armenian has less cases then Basque, but still quite a fairly big number (7 as opposed to 8-simple- to 12-full system- in Basque)
4. Neither of them uses grammatical gender.

It's not a huge lot to go on, but it IS something. Especially Nr 1 and 2.
 
This is a fascinating topic! Thanks for sharing.

Between about 2500-2000 BC, the researchers observed the replacement of 40% of Iberia's ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with ancestry from the Pontic Steppe, a region in what is today Ukraine and Russia. Interestingly, the findings show that in the Iron Age, "Steppe ancestry" had spread not only into Indo-European-speaking regions of Iberia but also into non-Indo-European-speaking ones, such as the region inhabited by the Basque . The researchers' analysis suggests that present-day Basques most closely resemble a typical Iberian Iron Age population, including the influx of "Steppe ancestry," but that they were not affected by subsequent genetic contributions that affected the rest of Iberia. This suggests that Basque speakers were equally affected genetically as other groups by the arrival of Steppe populations, but retained their language in any case. It was only after that time that they became relatively isolated genetically from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula[...].
From what I understand reading the paper, there was a first influx of predominantly male Steppe into Iberia, including the Basque region, but the latter was not subject to subsequent incursions of Steppe people in the area. This is visible in the genome data showing a high frequency of the Steppe Y-chromosome R1b (direct patrilineal descent) although the overall genetic admixture of modern-day Basque is predominantly a mix of hunter-gatherer and early farmer ancestry with very little Steppe ancestry.

The impact on the Basque language must have been relatively small since one would assume that the offsprings of the Steppe males were primarily raised and educated by the local women, possibly in a similar way to what happened to the Germanic tribes that invaded the Roman Empire, many of whom with time ended up adopting the local language.

Looking further back at the genetic histroy of the Iberians, the article posted by @Tristan provides an interesting piece of information about the earlier hunter gatherers inhabiting the Peninsula.

Earlier evidence had shown that, after the end of the last Ice Age, western and central Europe were dominated by hunter-gatherers with ancestry associated with an approximately 14,000-year-old individual from Villabruna, Italy. Italy is thought to have been a potential refuge for humans during the last Ice Age, like Iberia. The Villabruna-related ancestry largely replaced earlier ancestry in western and central Europe related to 19,000-15,000-year-old individuals associated with what is known as the Magdalenian cultural complex.

Interestingly, the findings of the current study show that both lineages were present in Iberian individuals dating back as far as 19,000 years ago. "We can confirm the survival of an additional Paleolithic lineage that dates back to the Late Ice Age in Iberia," says Wolfgang Haak of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, senior author of the study. "This confirms the role of the Iberian Peninsula as a refuge during the Last Glacial Maximum , not only for fauna and flora but also for human populations."

This suggests that, far from being replaced by Villabruna-related individuals after the last Ice Age, hunter-gatherers in Iberia in fact already had ancestry from Magdalenian- and Villabruna-related sources. The discovery suggests an early connection between two potential refugia, resulting in a genetic ancestry that survived in later Iberian hunter-gatherers.

"The hunter-gatherers from the Iberian Peninsula carry a mix of two older types of genetic ancestry: one that dates back to the Last Glacial Maximum and was once maximized in individuals attributed to Magdalenian culture and another one that is found everywhere in western and central Europe and had replaced the Magdalenian lineage during the Early Holocene everywhere except the Iberian Peninsula," explains Vanessa Villalba-Mouco of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, first author of the study.
This information comes from a paper published in 2019 that analysed genome data from 11 individuals from the Neolithic period which shows that Iberians at the time shared ancestry from two hunter-gatherer populations from the Late Palaeolithic, the more recent Villabruna and the earlier Magdalenian culture. This is in contrast to Neolithic individuals from other parts of Europe that didn't share Magdalenian ancestry.

As you can see in the picture below, the Magdalenian culture was present in most of Central Europe, spanning the periods 17k-10k BCE, right until the time of the Younger Dryas, and many of the sites discovered are concentrated across the Pyrenees. Some of the well known cave site paintings including Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain belong to the Magdalenian culture. The cultures that followed them show cruder art and tools compared to their predecessors.

magdalenian.png

Interestingly, this culture largely disappeared across Europe around the time of the Younger Dryas and was replaced by the 12K BCE individual from Villabruna in Italy. But the Magdalenian culture survived in the Iberian Peninsula which is seen in the genetic admixture of Neolithic Iberians. The Iberian Peninsula basically acted as one of the primary refuges for people who survived the Younger Dryas event.

As to the origin of the Basque language, I would guess that it could have been imported from the Anatolian farmers that settled during the Neolithic, but it could have already been present from the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers that inhabited the area. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a mix of both, i.e. a local language that was later influenced by the spread of farming communities from the East but that's purely a hunch from a non-linguist.

Regarding the link of Etruscan to Basque, I found a page on Quora that tries to address this point. One of the answers seems to suggest no direct link between the two languages, although both are indeed non Indo-European, the link being more likely due to the subsequent Latin influence on Basque, Latin having itself been influenced by Etruscan.

Is Etruscan related to Basque?

Almost certainly not. There have been a few theories to link Etruscan, Basque (usually as part of an extinct Iberian language family), and other dead pre-Indo-European languages in a sort of Old-European language family, but the general consensus is that Basque and Etruscan are completely unrelated. Basque is a language isolate, that may or may not actually be related to the Iberian language family, and Etruscan is a language isolate, that borrowed a few words from its Indo-European neighbors, and gave quite a few to its Indo-European neighbors. Any similarities they might have were transferred from Etruscan and through Latin into French and Spanish, which then influenced Basque themselves.

I’ve made a spreadsheet so you can compare Etruscan and Basque vocabulary. The word list I’m using is each languages’ Swadesh List, which is often used in linguistics to compare several languages, since the words on the list have been determined to be the statistically present in the most languages, and they also tend to be more conservative (they change less over time). I’ve put in Etruscan (taken from Mel Copeland’s updated 2014 Etruscan glossary), and Basque (taken from Wikipedia), and I’ve also added Latin (also taken from Wikipedia) and a two other Italic languages. This should show that any words that are cognate between Etruscan and Basque are also cognate with the Latin (which was heavily influenced by Etruscan, and indirectly heavily influenced Basque), and not so much with Oscan and Umbrian (which were Italic languages related to Latin, but which had less influence from Etruscan). Here it is:
Another answer from a google groups page suggests something similar (translated from Italian):

Let us repeat "ad nauseam" that the presence of this or that structural identity between Etruscan and other known languages should not lead to any conclusion not supported by the facts (note, by the way, that the Etruscan-Georgian-Basque connection has been one of the " battle horses" of the monogeneticists, both of the "folkloristic" Nikolaj Jakovlevic' Marr and of the more serious Trombetti). Just to give an example, Etruscan shows no trace of one of the most important morphosyntactic features of both Georgian and Basque, i.e. the ergative construction of the period (which, however, occurs in completely different ways in the two languages, and is present in other idioms as far apart as Eskimo dialects and classical Tibetan). Structural identities do not authorise any hypothesis of a genetic link, although it is right and proper to point them out when they are certain.
As to the validity of the above claims or whether the data shows an earlier link between the two languages, I leave it to linguists :-)
 
Hurrian, Basque and Basques,
@Chu asked me to see what I could find about the Basque(s) and the Hurrians in the sessions. The Hurrians were mentioned in Session 14 August 2016, and I posted a few maps but will repeat a couple of excerpts and add some new. After the Hurrians come excerpts connecting to Basque and Basques.

Hurrians
The Wiki has:
The Hurrians (/ˈhʊəriənz/; cuneiform: 𒄷𒌨𒊑; transliteration: Ḫu-ur-ri; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurrian language and lived in Anatolia, Syria and Northern Mesopotamia. The largest and most influential Hurrian nation was the kingdom of Mitanni, its ruling class perhaps being Indo-Aryan speakers. The population of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia included a large population of Hurrians, and there is significant Hurrian influence in Hittite mythology. By the Early Iron Age, the Hurrians had been assimilated with other peoples. The state of Urartu later covered some of the same area.[1
About the language of the Hurrians, the Wiki has:
The Hurrian language is closely related to the Urartian language, the language of the ancient kingdom of Urartu. Together they form the Hurro-Urartian language family. The external connections of the Hurro-Urartian languages are disputed. There exist various proposals for a genetic relationship to other language families (e.g. the Northeast Caucasian languages), but none of these are generally accepted.[2]

From the 21st century BC to the late 18th century BC, Assyria controlled colonies in Anatolia, and the Hurrians, like the Hattians or Lullubis, adopted the Assyrian Akkadian cuneiform script for their own language about 2000 BC. Texts in the Hurrian language in cuneiform have been found at Hattusa, Ugarit (Ras Shamra), as well as in one of the longest of the Amarna letters, written by King Tushratta of Mitanni to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. It was the only long Hurrian text known until a multi-tablet collection of literature in Hurrian with a Hittite translation was discovered at Hattusa in 1983.
If we check the Wiki for Urartu:
Urartu (/ʊˈrɑːrtuː/; Assyrian: māt Urarṭu,[5] Babylonian: Urashtu, Hebrew: אֲרָרָט Ararat) is a geographical region and Iron Age kingdom also known as the Kingdom of Van, centered around Lake Van in the historic Armenian Highlands. The kingdom rose to power in the mid-9th century BC, but went into gradual decline and was eventually conquered by the Iranian Medes in the early 6th century BC.[6] Since its re-discovery in the 19th century, Urartu, which is commonly believed to have been at least partially Armenian-speaking,[2][7][8][9][10] has played a significant role in Armenian nationalism.[11]
The area, once inhabited by the Hurrians, includes areas where one today find Kurds in high numbers. Lake Van is in Eastern Turkey, southwest of present day Armenia.
Kurdish-inhabited_area_by_CIA_(1992).jpg
Session 14 August 2016:
"Check the Hurrian connection"
A: Jemxmakanbnz of Cassiopaea giving greetings.

Q: (L) Well, that was the strangest name I've ever seen. That it is such a very strange name provokes me to inquire about it. What is the reason for it?

A: Energetic profile of higher density attracted by the elevated discussion.

Q: (L) You mean our discussion in the kitchen earlier took us to a different level?

A: Yes

Q: (L) And we are in a realm of almost complete abstraction, and therefore we have a name that is completely abstract and unpronounceable? [laughter]

A: Yes

Q: (L) I see. Well, maybe we should begin with some of the questions that are from that abstract level since that's where we are. In the course of my recent research, I keep going deeper and deeper and further back following one thread after another. While I have touched on the topic of Zoroastrianism in the past, I had never gone into it as deeply as I recently decided to do. As a consequence, I ended up reading several scholarly tomes on the topic. It seems there are two schools. One school thinks that Zoroaster was a fairly late phenomenon, probably 7th century BC. The other school relies on the linguistics - the philology I guess they'd call it - and they claim that the language of Zoroaster must date back to the second millennium BC - that is, somewhere between 1600 and 1200 BC. That would put Zoroaster in the timeframe of, say, Akhenaten. In brief, Zoroaster claimed to have had a vision, or so the story goes, that revealed to him the One God, Ahura Mazda, and he promoted a religion of almost pure monotheism as well as being more or less the originator of the idea that human beings have the free will to choose good or evil. He also was the first to come up with ideas of messianism, eschatology. It was an apocalyptic religion in the sense of being revealed, but also that there were to be revelations about the end of time - time of course being a very important concept in his religion as it developed. So, I guess the first question I want to know is: Is there any possibility that Akhenaten was influenced by Zoroastrianism? Is that a possibility?

A: Not just a possibility, but a certainty.


Q: (L) If that's the case, how was that possible?

A: The ancient world was quite "well connected".

Q: (L) Okay... Can you get me any closer to a clue here?

A: Check the Hurrian connection.
"Check he Hurrian connection", in relation to the "possibility that Akhenaten was influenced by Zoroastrianism" and 'The ancient world was quite "well connected"'. may have several meanings, but from a geographical point of view, traders and emissaries from the Hurrian area could have gone both to Egypt and to Iran, Caucasus or beyond the Caspian Sea. I looked up caravan travelling on the Silk Road to get an idea. There were doubts that many travelled the whole length, but a few hundred to a 1000 km would allow the people travelling to be familiar with the people inhabiting the lands, their politics, languages, local risks and the geography. However, even without horses and camels, one can consider how early Australasians travelled across Australia, see this article in the Daily Mail.

Giants that lived most recently spoke a language similar to Basque
Below follows the context that surrounds the question about the language of the giants in Session 13 March 2021

Q: (L) Okay. Do we have anymore cryptomundo questions?

(Joe) That's the end of crypto hour.

(L) What about those huge jars we were talking about earlier?

(Joe) Oh yeah! Who made the stone jars that litter the landscape in Laos? [See:

]

A: Race of hominids no longer extant.

Q: (Joe) What was the purpose of the jars?

A: Storage.

Q: (Artemis) Were they big people or normal sized?

A: Giants.

Q: (Andromeda) How did they transport them?

A: Technology. Think "Coral Castle".

Q: (Andromeda) Technological giants.

(Joe) Did they store grain in them to make beer?

(L) To make BEER?! [laughter]

(Andromeda) That was one of the theories.

A: Some.

Q: (Joe) They were big drinkers, I see... [laughter]

(L) So I guess we should just think about the fact that there's so much evidence of higher technologies, races of giants on the planet, I mean... It's also covered up. Look at that Smithsonian business. If I remember correctly, even within recorded history, there were giants discovered living on some - like Patagonia or something - that have died out. Of course, there's some evidence that there were some gigantic types still on the Canary Islands and in the Americas that had double rows of teeth.

(Joe) They found giant axes in various places too.

A: Indeed. The true history of your planet is little known. Refer to collections made by your Mr. Hancock.

Q: (L) I think that must mean Graham Hancock?

A: Yes

Q: (L) Yeah, he's a pretty good researcher as long as he doesn’t try to figure out esoteric things on his own.

(Pierre) In his last book, the second part is dedicated to giants in America.

(L) What's the title?

(Andromeda) 'Giants in America', I think.

(Niall) His most recent book is called 'America Before' or something. We have it upstairs.

(Pierre) He's documented that a lot. And the Mound people and...

(L) Okay. The 'Giants in America' or some such title, must be the other book I have. It has images of all the many articles about finds in America that were sent to the Smithsonian where they disappeared and then denials of their existence were made afterward. It’s obviously a huge coverup.

(Joe) Is it true that the really tall giants - like 13 or 15 feet - were they alive under the same gravitational conditions as we have today?

A: Not exactly. Conditions on your planet changed significantly at the time of the destruction of the Roman Empire. Giants from that time forward faced increasingly difficult conditions and survival became untenable.

Q: (L) So there were some still left in pockets, is that it?

A: Yes

Q: (Joe) Those were the ones discovered by explorers after the Dark Ages.


(Chu) Did they have a language we might be familiar with if they lived that recently?

A: Yes

Q: (Chu) Which language?

A: Similar to Basque.

Q: (Andromeda) Like Atlantean.


(Scottie) I think 'hello' was, "Fee-fi-fo-fum"... [laughter]

(L) And their favorite thing to say was, "I smell the blood of an Englishman!"

(Joe) So, gravity was less, let's say, to make it easy for them to...

A: Yes. Also electrical charge of planet.

Q: (L) That reminds me of all the really peculiar electrical phenomena recorded in the ancient Greco-Roman records that seemed to sort of stop when records picked up again after the destruction of the ancient world. But, of course, there were periods when things were really weird even after that. So the people before the end of the Roman Empire were seeing a lot more of our plasma men than we would see nowadays?

A: Yes

Q: (Andromeda) But the giants lived alongside little people then?

A: Yes

Q: (Joe) And was life easier for normal people then, as well?

A: Yes

Q: (L) It had probably been in decline beginning from even earlier periods...

A: Yes

Q: (L) So that was the last big change I guess, something like 540 AD.

(Joe) In the reports of explorers after the Roman Empire going and finding giants and stuff, if they fought with the giants it seems they were relatively easily defeated as they were big and slow.

(L) They probably weren't able to deal with the environmental conditions.

(Andromeda) Were they stupid?

A: Not at first.

Q: (L) But they became stupid as their health declined in the environmental changes?

A: Yes

Q: (Chu) They had to be pretty smart if they had the technology to move stones.

(L) Yeah, but that would have been earlier. Well, didn't the Denisovans have extremely large teeth? Were they connected in some way to the giants?

A: Yes. Connected but not identical.

Q: (Artemis) Is anybody here distantly related to a giant?

(Andromeda) [whispers] Scottie! [laughter]

(L) In other words, do any of us have any genetic leftovers from that?

A: No

Q: (Chu) Not even Beau?! [laughter]

A: No
Aliens in contact with the elite speak a language similar to Basque
The first part of Session 10 December 2022 gives the context, even if it does not mention Basque
A: Push to get a machine translator.

Q: (L) Um, okay we'll come back to that. Hello. Who do we have with us this evening?

A: Rilniaea of Cassiopaea and hello to all.

Q: (L) Back to what you said... Okay, who should push to get a machine translator?

A: What elite are doing in preparation. Part of AI initiative.

Q: (L) So they want AI to build a machine translator that can translate alien speech?

A: Yes

Q: (Joe) Where are they getting alien speech from?

A: Interactions with "aliens".

Q: (L) So they have interactions with aliens now?

A: Yes and are at disadvantage.

Q: (Joe) According to the C's and other sources, they've been talking to aliens for quite a long time. So...?

A: Yes but aliens can talk to each other and exclude humans thereby concealing intentions and plans.

Q: (Pierre) Yeah, they disclose only what they want, not the whole plan.

A: Yes

Q: (L) So, humans are trying to get some kind of a... So, does that mean that some humans are suspicious of the aliens?

A: Oh yes. But clearly others are exactly as described: hosts of "walk-ins".

Q: (Joe) So it's like they go to meetings with aliens. The aliens talk to them in English or whatever human language, and then they break off and discuss in their alien language? It's like being at a meeting with people you don't understand.

A: Something like that.

Q: (L) But don't aliens have the ability to read minds? Suppose they had this AI translator.. Then they wouldn't be thinking about.. Oh, I just answered my own question - Somebody would still be thinking about it.

A: Some are trained to block thoughts.

Q: (Joe) So when we talk about aliens having discussions with humans, is that in a physical way in a room with humans and "aliens"?

A: Yes

Q: (Joe) And what form do the aliens take from the perspective of the humans?

A: Usually Nordic types.

Q: (Joe) Because alligators would be too scary.

A: Yes

Q: (Joe) We're beautiful long-haired Nordic people! Look at us shine! And high cheek bones. *Growls/hisses* [laughter]

(L) Creepy! Anything more we need to know on that topic?

A: Up to you.

Q: (L) Well, on that topic, sort of, as I just kind of recited what I remember from the session... though I think I'd need to search... You know, you said that when the time for the change gets closer, they will become more desperate to increase their power over every single aspect of human life. We see that happening. And then you said change would follow. Is that "change" a good thing?

A: Yes

Q: (L) I just... Just wanted to know. Okay, is it gonna happen fairly expeditiously? Like within one person's lifetime?

A: Yes

Q: (L) Um, can I narrow it down? [laughter] Do I dare? Is it gonna happen, say, like within my lifetime?

A: Yes

Q: (L) PHEW! You also said there was gonna be a level playing field. Now, level in what sense?

A: Transitioning will give those humans with receivership capability "abilities." Also, as you noted the planet is being reduced to a rather primitive condition in many areas. The elite do not realize that this process has a domino effect and their money and "power" will be essentially worthless.

Q: (L) Hmm.

(Joe) Would it be true to say that at these meetings, the aliens are presenting themselves and their agenda as benevolent to the humans involved?

A: More or less, yes.

Q: (L) So, all the things that they're talking about: needing to save the planet, something dreadful... I mean, maybe Bill Gates actually believes that you need to put stuff in the atmosphere to shield us from the sun because we really are gonna fry because... Maybe some of them REALLY believe that! Maybe they've been told...

(Joe) Or is the basic premise of these meetings between humans and aliens that the planet is going to go through a transition? Cataclysms coming up, planet's gonna be destroyed...?

A: Yes

Q: (Joe) And we need to prepare, and here's what you have to do. And they're attempting to guide the elite at these meetings...

A: Yes

Q: (Joe) In a particular direction. But it's all...

(L) So some of them actually believe that what they're doing is for THEIR survival, naturally, because they don't give a hoot about anybody else.

(Joe) Remember them talking about Tony Blair being promised a seat on the Rapture Train?

(L) Yeah. But they don't realize that it's gonna...

(Joe) That it's not something under the aliens' control, basically. They don't have the ability to dictate or help or control the outcome of the situation.

A: Yes

Q: (L) Wishful thinking. Gets you every time
And later in Session 10 December 2022
(L) Let's see what we've got here for questions.

(Chu) Wait, what is this alien language like that needs to be translated?

A: Similar to Basque.


Q: (Chu) REALLY?! I KNEW IT! [laughter]

(L) You knew it?

(Chu) Well, they may not have fancy telepathy; they just speak an ancient language, like Basque.
Basque is a derivative of the Atlantean language
Session 7 October 1994
Q: (L) Where do the Basques come from?

A: Atlantis.

Q: (L) Is their language the Atlantean language?


A: Derivative.
Where are the Pyrenees? Who lives there? The Basques, among others.
These questions were asked by the Cs in Session 2 May 1998, even if the beginning did not seem to lead to those questions:
Q: Who was Joseph of Arimathea?

A: A disciple of the unibound.

Q: What's a 'unibound?'

A: Singular thought.

Q: What is the unibound?

A: Transcendant discipline.

Q: And what does one do if one is a participant?

A: Up to 96 hours of clear channel meditation.

Q: Okay, so Joseph was a disciple of this... is this an individual or a concept?

A: Each.

Q: What was Joseph's role, if any, in relation to the 'Holy Grail?'

A: None.

Q: Who created the legends of the Holy Grail and Joseph of Arimathea bringing it to a) France, or b) England? Who was behind the creating of this group of legends?

A: Not a group of legends.

Q: Why was the 12th century the focal point for the propagation of the grail legends, the troubadours, the whole thing?

A: Beginning of "Renaissance."

Q: The story is, and there are even some very old legends in France itself, that there are caves or places where Joseph and Mary Magdalene spent the night, or lived, or whatever. Did Joseph of Arimathea actually travel to France and then to England later, with Mary Magdalene or other followers of Jesus?

A: No.

Q: Did he travel to France alone?

A: No.

Q: What is the source of these stories? What is the point of these stories?

A: Deflection.

Q: Deflection of what to what or from what?

A: Truth from recipient.

Q: Okay.
Did somebody travel to France carrying some sort of object, or a person who was this 'object,' so to speak, as the 'holy bloodline,' or whatever?

A: Maybe it was carried by those most capable.

Q: And who would be those most capable?

A: Check the geographic link.

Q: I am getting completely confused. I don't have a single clue about what is going on here or even what we are talking about now!

A: Where are the Pyrenees?

Q: On the border between France and Spain.

A: Who lives there?

Q: The Basques, among others. Is that who we are getting at? Or the Alchemists? These beings....

A: Close.


Q: The Rosicrucians? So, what does that have to do with this bloodline and Holy Grail business, and Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene... I mean, did Mary Magdalene exist as a person?

A: Yes.
[Who was Mary Magdalene really?]
@Gaby quoted, in a post in the Session 10 December 2022, a research article which mentions the Vascones and their language Proto-Basque. The article also indicates that the area where Basque is spoken has changed over time.

In the session about the Hurrians, the Cs said that it was certain that "Akhenaten was influenced by Zoroastrianism" that "The ancient world was quite "well connected"' and then "Check the Hurrian connection.". In the session just quoted, there was "Maybe it was carried by those most capable." Which could then lead to recall more quotes from sessions that mention Akhenaten, even if it does not relate to language alone, so I will end with an excerpt that connect back to the session that mentioned Akhenaten.
Session 3 July 1999

Q: Was Akhenaten Moses?

A: Only through the eyes of the themes.

Q: What happened to Akhenaten? He also brought about the monotheistic worship and was apparently so hated that any mention of him, his very name, was stricken from buildings and statuary; his tomb was defaced and there was tremendous turmoil in the land. He essentially disappeared from the landscape, erased by the people who must have really hated him. What was the deal with Akhenaten?

A: Is not that enough? Must one endure anymore?

Q: Endure anymore what?

A: Vilification.

Q: Why was Akhenaten portrayed in images as a rather feminine individual? Did he have a congenital disease? Was he a hermaphrodite? Was he an alchemical adept who had gone through the transformation?

A: None of these.

Q: What was the reason for his strange physical appearance; his feminine hips and belly and strangely elongated face...

A: Depictions.

Q: So this was NOT how he really looked?

A: Not really.

Q: Did he choose to be depicted this way?

A: No.

Q: Was he depicted this way later as an insult?

A: Closer.
 

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