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The Kingdom of Navarre / Nafarroa
AD 840 - 1512
A pocket kingdom, Navarre was founded no later than AD 737 as a
Frankish march county up alongside the Western Pyrenees. It was isolated from early contact with the
Islamic invaders
and was less involved with the Reconquista than other states. Initially under
the domination of the Franks, it was also open to influence by the native Basque (Euskeran)
peoples, and was, essentially, a Basque kingdom in pre-Spanish
Spain (hence
the Basque name, Nafarroa).
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in Genes, Peoples, and Languages (University of
California Press, 2000) states (pp.120-121): "...the Basques once
inhabited a much larger territory than today... During the last Paleolithic
period the Basque region extended over almost the entire area where ancient
cave paintings have been found. There are some [clues] that Basque descends
from a language spoken 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, during the first
occupation of France by [Homo sapiens]... The artists of these caves
would have spoken a language of the first, pre-agricultural Europeans, from
which modern Basque is derived." |
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