Editing Basques (section)

==Genetic origins==
{{Main|Origin of the Basques}}
[[File:Dolmen de Sorginetxe.jpg|thumb|Sorginetxe [[dolmen]] next to the stream and cave Leze, home to legends featuring mythological character [[Mari (goddess)|Mari]]]]

The distinctiveness noted by studies of classical genetic markers (such as [[Blood type|blood groups]]) and the [[Pre-Indo-European languages|pre-Indo-European]] of the Basque language has resulted in a popular and long-held view that Basques are "living fossils" of the earliest [[Anatomically modern humans|modern humans]] who colonised Europe.<ref name="Alonso2005">{{cite journal |last=Alonso|first=Santos |display-authors=etal |title=The place of the Basques in the European Y-chromosome diversity landscape |journal=European Journal of Human Genetics |publisher=Springer Nature |volume=13 |issue=12 |year=2005 |pages=1293–1302 |doi=10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201482 |pmid=16094307 |s2cid=7089003 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Partly for these reasons, anthropological and genetic studies from the beginning and the end of the 20th century theorized that the Basques are the descendants of the original [[Cro-Magnons]].<ref>Wells, H. G. ''[[The Outline of History]]''. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1920, Volume I, Chapter XI "The Races of Mankind," pp. 131-144. Compare pp. 98, 137 and 139.</ref><ref>Cavalli-Sforza, L. Luca; Menozzi, Paolo; and Piazza Alberto. ''The History and Geography of Human Genes''. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 280.</ref> 

But although they are genetically distinctive in some ways due to isolation, the Basques are still very typically European in their [[Y-DNA]] and [[mtDNA]] sequences, and in some other genetic [[Locus (genetics)|loci]]. These same sequences are widespread throughout the Western half of Europe, especially along the Western fringe of the continent.<ref name="Dupanloup2004">{{cite journal|last=Dupanloup|first=I.|display-authors=etal|title=Estimating the Impact of Prehistoric Admixture on the Genome of Europeans|journal=Molecular Biology and Evolution|publisher=Oxford University Press|volume=21|issue=7|year=2004|pages=1361–1372|doi=10.1093/molbev/msh135|pmid=15044595|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="Pericic2005">{{cite journal|last=Pericic|first=M.|display-authors=etal|title=High-Resolution Phylogenetic Analysis of Southeastern Europe Traces Major Episodes of Paternal Gene Flow Among Slavic Populations|journal=Molecular Biology and Evolution|publisher=Oxford University Press|volume=22|issue=10|year=2005|pages=1964–1975|doi=10.1093/molbev/msi185|pmid=15944443|doi-access=free}}</ref>