Whew. Back in the land of Basque flags and unreadable translations.
No one really knows where the Basques came from. Their language isn't related to anything else, so no help there. And whatever else historians or archaeologists or anthropologists study to try and figure things out has also been dead ends. On my first trip to the Basque country, a friend and I entertained ourselves by deciding that the Basques must have been Celts. It's the obvious guess: The geography is about right, and traditional Basque music sounds Celtic, and some traditional Basque dances look a lot like Riverdance. (It may be that I just think all traditional dance looks like Riverdance.) And you know that Irish-looking font that you mostly only see on Irish bars? There's a similar lettering that they use everywhere here. QED. (Also, my Spanish teacher here told me that when she went to Ireland it felt like home.)
I felt a little vindicated when I read that people have actually researched the Celtic hypothesis. Much as I would like for my Irish roots to make me some kind of long-lost Basque, though, there's apparently no evidence that the Basques came from Celts. One thing they have learned from studying Basque origins is that Basques have more people with O-negative blood than just about anyone else in the world. Just for the record, I too have O-negative blood.
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