The Basque-Sumerian-Rh Negative Connection

I have previously written about the connection between the original Basques and the ancient Hebrews. This is taking it a step further. As you probably know, the ancient Hebrews are descendants of the Sumerians.

Under the 3rd Dynasty of Ur, Sumer was becoming more Semitic than Sumerian.
Y-DNA haplogroup J is known as the Sumerian marker now common in Jews and Arabs and especially frequent in the ancient Hebrews.

Around 30% of male Ashkenazi Jews today still carry that marker. Usually, different ancient Hebrew tribes could be separated by subclades. For example, J1c3 still being present in about half of today’s Cohanim Jews indicates this likely to have been the original marker of this tribe.

If someone claims something like haplogroup E1b1b being the Cohanim marker, don’t pay attention and do your own research instead. Those claims are usually done by people with the last name Cohen carrying E1b1b rather than the original marker unable to accept that at one point their male lineage has become “impure”.

Today, Basque DNA is very different, especially within the male lineages, from the original Proto-Basques. The original Basque y-DNA was mainly I2a (some G2a which is still dominant in the Caucasus regions), but Celtiberian R1b men slaughtered the original I2a Basque speaking men, procreated with their women, and only left a few I2a (original) Basque men in the population.

As one Eupedia member has stated:

My personal conclusion is; due to the invasions and rapings of indigenous people. This would be a better explaination for why the Basques have such a mystery of themselves and do not know their cultural origins. For their invading Celtiberian forefathers were probably more unlikely and apathetic to care about such things; as explaining the history of the Basque population to their children and how they came to be.

This makes lots of sense to me. The Basques today have seen their culture interrupted. Still holding close to what remains, but history has been taken from them and most will tell you openly that they do not know their own origin.

This is where we come in!

The origin of haplogroup I2a is not certain, but it may be the haplogroup of the first anatomically modern humans to inhabit Europe. It has been found in ancient remains from Frankthi cave, in the eastern Peloponnese region of Greece. Along with its modern presence in Crete and Sicily, this may suggest that the haplogroup originated in the Eastern Mediterranean.

It may well be possible that while I2a men were replaced by R1b men in the Basque region, the I2a men could have been responsible for doing the same thing previously to the Neanderthal men over a large period of time. I will get more into that at a later time, so subscribe to my blog in order to get alerted when that article gets published.

So let’s move on to what gets a lot more exciting:
The mtDNA line of the Basques and how it changed over time

While today mtDNA K has a frequency of 4% among the Basques, it was around 24% 5,000 years ago.

This is a huge difference! And not dissimilar to how mtDNA J frequencies have also changed over time. But while a small study of ancient burial grounds revealed subhaplogroups J1c1 and J2a to have stood out, J1c5c and J1c6 are notably present today alongside one specific marker which is found in northern and central Europe, among the Basques, and in Iran (Persians):

J1c2e

While the original male lineage of the Basques may derive from early modern humans as well as the Caucasus region to some degree, the female line shows distinct ancestry within the Fertile Crescent.

Looking at the list of rulers of Elam from earliest times to the Persian Empire, the first three kings of Awan were also kings of Mesopotamia.

And that was more than 1,000 years before Shutruk Nahunte who was finally made to be famous in the movie “The Emperor’s Club”.

There are also potential linguistic links between ancient Sumerians and Basques.

Examining the area of the Fertile Crescent, for the most part, Arabic regions have fairly low rh negative percentages usually with less than 10%, but there are hotspots showing high frequencies of rh negatives including the Karaite Jews of Iraq, the Bedouins of the Sinai Peninsula and the Al-Jouf Province of Saudi Arabia.

Isolation and inbreeding are likely responsible for preserving such high frequencies throughout the times.

So what about a shift in mtDNA?

This is where we get to haplogroup mtDNA V:

Haplogroup V is a relatively rare mtDNA haplogroup, occurring in around 4% of native Europeans. Its highest concentration is among the Saami people of northern Scandinavia (~59%). Additionally, haplogroup V has been observed at higher than average levels among Cantabrian people (15%) of northern Iberia, and among the adjacent Basque (10.4%). But it has once been absent from the Basques and fluctuates between 0% and 20%.

Just like y-DNA R1b was once absent from the Basques, so was mtDNA V. Mind you that the Sami of Norway and Finland have only between 5 and 7% rh negatives amongst them while Basques still count 1 out of 3. This indicates the V females arriving later to the high rh negative Basques but they themselves showing low frequencies originally.

Most likely, the frequency of rh negatives among the original Basques was much higher than today before the Proto-Celtic invasion.

And regarding rh negative frequencies of different early European groups, this chart may be a good estimate:

See the sources listed below for deeper detail.

Does that mean that rh negative blood originates in ancient Sumer?
Absolutely not. We need to dig deeper and go back further. But it strongly indicates that ancient Sumer was at least a hotspot where at least some regions must have had extremely high percentages of rh negatives.

As the 2 maps above indicate, rh negative frequencies in ancient Europe were likely much higher than they are today.

Be it the arrival of the Proto-Celts or a group also responsible for today’s Saami people, all indications are there, that those who came later, were lower in rh negative blood while earliest settlers (the Basques) had much higher rh negative frequencies at the time than exist anywhere in the world today.

So while rh negative blood was once imported into Europe, so was rh positive blood at a later time. There is no reason to believe that rh negative blood will at one point go extinct, but the worldwide frequency trend is continuing to go down.

A huge “Thank you!” goes out to Mr. Maciamo Hay from Eupedia.com who has helped me put together the amazing data mentioned in this article.

Conclusion:

The origin of the Basques is not in Europe. The male lineage indicates potential ancestry in the Eastern Mediterranean and Caucasus region with the female lineage showing strong ancestry within the Fertile Crescent.

Sources include:
Basque and Haplogroup J1c
An mtDNA Analysis in Ancient Basque Populations: Implications forHaplogroup V as a Marker for a Major Paleolithic Expansion fromSouthwestern Europe
Post New mtDNA & Y-DNA frequencies for the Basques
The original Basques were not Celtic
More than half of the ancient Basques were rh negative
Were the Sumerians rh negative?
The mystery of Haplogroup V (mtDNA)
Blood Type Frequencies by Country including the Rh Factor