There is still much to be clarified about the atics of the Basque population and the distribution of the different typological components throughout the territory. After commenting on some elements of the anthropogenetics of our population, we have yet to mention, at least in passing, something about its biodynamics.
The biological interpretation of Basque nature suggests questions on the following points:
a) It is a human group located for centuries in a territory.b) It is a biological community within the Basque eco.c) The types of eco leave their mark on the genotypes, phenotypes, behaviour and culture of the individuals in that population.d) There has been an evolution in the peasant, pastoral, fishing, mining and industrial ways of life.e) Industrialisation and the corresponding phenomenon of migration have changed the structure of the population as in many parts of Spain. The breakdown of isolation, maintained by linguistic and relief barriers, has given rise to miscegenation.f) Endogamy - that is, mating only with individuals from the same village - and consanguinity are only preserved in some Pyrenean valleys.
If these data are taken into account, will they go some way towards clarifying the current situation? Without falling into the biological determinism of some ethologists who stress the intuitive component of the behaviour of human groups, we could give a green light to the biological interpretation of Basque nature: it provides ways of estimating the influence of certain demographic phenomena such as birth rate, mortality, longevity, marriage distances, choice of spouse, consanguinity, miscegenation, etc. on the Basque population and on the structure and typology of the individuals who make it up. As examples of endogamy, we will limit ourselves to providing data from some research carried out in a Pyrenean valley and another in the Aralar valley in Gipuzkoa. The data on the population of the Spanish Pyrenean regions are those provided by Olóriz, Sánchez Fernández, Hoyos Sainz and more recently Alcobé, Pons, Prebosti, Fusté and Basabe, of the University of Barcelona.
On the northern slopes of the Pyrenees, the journal Cahiers d'Antropologie et d'Ecologie Humaine II, 3-4 (1974) brings together the different topics presented at a Seminar on Pyrenean Ecology: Human Being and the French Pyrenees, Anthropological Diversity, Ecological Conditions, Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Iron Age in the French Pyrenees. Anthropologists from the University of Barcelona have investigated three high Pyrenean valleys: the Aran Valley, Andorra and Cerdanya; in addition, Alcobé has studied the Navarrese Pyrenees (the valleys of Baztan and Aezkoa). The aforementioned researchers have discovered very ancient racial elements in isolated areas scattered throughout the Pyrenees maintained by means of endogamy, elements that have to do with the permanence of traits attributable to the so-called Pyrenean-Western human type. It seems, moreover, that the toponymy of many forms of relief confirms this presumption. This human type is very widespread, starting in Aragon, passing through the Navarrese Pyrenees and reaching the Bay of Biscay. Two studies, one on Amezketa and Bedaio in Gipuzkoa and the other on Roncal in Navarre, have confirmed the anthropodynamic influence that the relief of these places has on the evolution of their populations in matters such as consanguinity, marriage distances, repetition of surnames, etc., giving rise, as a consequence, to a well-defined regional human type in terms of its somatic, genetic and behavioural nature. Precisely at the two extremes of the Pyrenees, which are an obligatory passage France and Spain, there are human groups that have been able to maintain their place as a differentiated entity, even linguistically.
On the other hand, the dynamics of the population, based on the ecological requirements of the way of life imposed by the agriculture-forestry-pastoralism trilogy, carries in its periodic migrations, its language, its genes, its surnames and its culture, as much now as in the Middle Ages and in prehistoric times. All this has an impact and deposits a sediment in the genome of the population. If we take into account the biodemography of three isolated Navarrese villages, Burgui, Roncal and Urzainqui, the oscillation of the birth rate and the dominance of the good years, the scarcity of illegitimate births, the decrease in infant mortality, the depressing effect of the size of the population caused by carlistadas or plagues, the high endogamy (60% in Urzainqui, 47% in Roncal), the determining effect of the climate as a mortality factor, the three villages are different and isolated from their surroundings. The valleys of Gipuzkoa, Amezketa, Alegia and Bedaio, something similar; Bedaio, which until a few years ago had no telephone and no roads, has suffered the greatest reproductive isolation. The average age of marriage for men has been 30 years and 26 for women, and the coefficients of consanguinity are much higher than the Spanish average. At the end of the 19th century, the average individual life expectancy was 30-35 years, rising to 55-60 by the middle of the 20th century.