There are three groups of authors who have researched the subject:
Those of the late 19th century -Broca, Collignon, Quatrefages.Those of the early 20th century -Aranzadi, Barandiarán, Eguren, Hoyos Sainz, Jaureguiberry, Etcheberry, Valloisy.Those of the last decades of the 20th century, Marquer, Riquet, Ruffie, Mourant, those of the Barcelona School of Anthropology -Alcobé, Fusté, Pons-, those of the University of the Basque Country -Basabe, de la Rúa and Iturrioz-, and A. Valls of the University of Madrid.
The former, using simpler methods, were more primitive and had the opportunity to study less heterogeneous human beings; the more modern ones, knowledgeable in genetics, biochemistry, ecology, prehistory, etc., delve much more deeply into the concept of race, giving it a very relative value. Two of them, Marquer and Riquet, deny the denomination and existence of the "Pyrenean-Western" type of Aranzadi, partly because they do not know the biological realities of peninsular Euskal Herria.
The Frenchman Paul Broca, considered by some to be the founder of anthropology, measured sixty skulls from Zarautz (1862-1867) and as many from Saint-Jean-de-Luz, taking many photographs of living people. The conclusion he reached was as follows: the Basques of the south are of a dolichocephalic race (M=77.67) different from the European dolichocephalic race and related to the white race of North Africa, the Guanche of the Canary Islands and the troglodyte race of Cro-Magnon. In Northern Laburdi, however, he found a majority of brachycephalans and ultrabrachycephalans (M-80.25).
Etcheberry has raised the question of whether the skulls measured in Zarautz belonged to genuine Basques; and the Frenchman Collignon has seen the same problem with regard to the cosmopolitan town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. With the exception of Aranzadi, the work of Collignon, a disciple of Broca (1893), was the best of his time, carried out with Basque recruits from the north of that year and, as a control, with a Spanish regiment from Gipuzkoa. In them he found a new human group that clearly differed from those he had observed until then in France and North Africa: "tall in stature, much taller than the average Frenchman, broad shoulders, slender limbs, head elongated but broad towards the middle, long narrow face, dark hair and eyes". He concludes by saying that the Basque head is characterised by two surprising peculiarities: "A curvature at the temples and an enormous narrowing of the face towards the chin".
Among the research carried out at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one on the Basque population, whose evolution has been investigated over a period of more than ninety years, we have two authors of great interest. One of them is Professor E. Vallois, a leading anthropologist in recent times, and the other is Telesforo Aranzadi, the true founder of Basque anthropology. The aforementioned French author has confirmed and ratified what has been observed by the previous ones. In his opinion:
"el pueblo vasco constituye un pueblo autónomo... que se diferencia en sus caracteres físicos, y ello aun dejando de lado la etnia y la lengua. El aspecto de la cabeza es especial. Encorvada en las sienes, el cráneo presenta una cara larga y delgada que va estrechándose hacia abajo y que acaba en un mentón huidizo y afilado... a pesar de la encorvadura la cabeza suele ser bastante larga, con un índice 1-83, moderadamente braquicéfala. Frente recta que se une, casi sin hondonada suprasanal, a una nariz leptorrina delgada y saliente. Los cabellos suelen ser morenos, oscuros o negros, siendo los rubios excepción. Pero los ojos son a menudo claros, verdes o castaños".
Vallois' description corresponds to the northern Basques. In the south, dark eyes predominate (60 %), often with a green iris component (30 %). The orbits of the eyes are high and rounded, the infero-external profile of the orbital angle of the skull being very characteristic. The ears are long (M=66 mm in males) with a loose lobe. The lips are thin (M=7 mm), the upper lip is often tucked back (opisthocoelia), which sculptors and portraitists are well aware of, the jaw is straight, the chin is sharp and the gonios are markedly narrow, i.e. under the two ears the angle formed by the body and the branches of the jaw has a very narrow opening. This collection of characters formed by the curved temples, the narrow jaw and the sharp, receding chin forms a figure that French authors have called "bec de lièvre" ("hare's beak") and Aranzadi "grasshopper's face".
Aranzadi believes that the skull and facial structure being discussed are the result of an introversion of the front point of the occipital foramen called the basion and, in his opinion, the bony ring of the basion, rising at the front and forming an angle with the horizontal plane, may be the cause of a craniofacial mechanism that explains the inward profile of the face, the size of the nose, the fact that the temples are so curved and the tilting of the occipital region. According to the anthropologist from Bergara, this collection of features "is basically the same thing, the characteristic of a profoundly original race, the Pyrenean-Western race, which cannot be explained by the contribution of exotic types and whose combination is originally Basque".
Concepción de la Rúa's doctoral thesis (1984) is devoted to this subject; in the framework of this research, the graves of two hundred religious - one hundred men and one hundred women - whose age, sex, autochthony and origin of parents and grandparents were known, were exhumed. The body structure is strong. Compared to the arm, the forearm is short and in the lower body trunk, quite long, the thigh is quite short. The height has always been one of the highest in the Peninsula; in the north compared to the rest of France the difference is not so pronounced. The same appears in the map of Spanish conscripts of 1967, in the scheme that Aranzadi presented at the end of the last century and in the research of Esther Rebato and G. Arriandiaga on the men and women of the Autonomous Community.
The change in height that has occurred in one hundred years can be observed, with a growth of 4.5 centimetres; this phenomenon has taken place in almost all developed towns and is, to a large extent, a consequence of the phenomenon of exploitation of the environment that has repercussions on the improvement of food, hygiene, standard of living and the neuroendocrine . 1889 and 1984, the height of men in Gipuzkoa increased by 7.4 centimetres and 5 centimetres in Bizkaia. Something similar has happened in the north, with the aforementioned growth in height reaching 4.8 centimetres. As far as the trunk is concerned, in women the body is quite elongated and somewhat rectangular, while in men the long, very high back covers a chest in the shape of a conical trunk, which is elongated downwards with a slender waist and very narrow hips. The curves of the rachis are very lively and give the gait a special slenderness and ease. In females the width of the back is equal to the world average for males; they have a fairly broad pelvis and are close to their height. In both males and females the height of the instep is remarkable. In the hands, as in the lower limbs, in addition to the genotype of each person, the peristalsis at work has a great influence; this can be seen in the measurements of the fingers and hands of pelotaris and rederos (thesis by M. Fusté), in the arms of the remontistas and in the difference the feet of urban women and those of the homemakers who use abarcas (work by K. Untzueta). The projection of the Basque biotype is clear in the choice and practice of sports that require great strength and speed. The characteristic of the Basques of the south is the scarce development of body hair. In the middle phalanx of the hands and feet, the Basque population, according to the nine hundred types - male and female - measured, has the lowest percentage of hairlessness among the seventy populations investigated (M= 16.47 %). Skin colour can be expressed quantitatively when measured by means of a reflectance spectrophotometer placed on the inside of the left arm; the reflectance curves place the Basques behind the English, Belgians and Dutch, with the Biscayans being more pigmented (m=77) than the Guipuzcoans (m=69), but ahead of the Leonese and other Spaniards. As far as colour is concerned, women are whiter than Basque men and English women and are on a par with Caucasian women. With regard to the colour of the iris, as has already been mentioned, both men and women, in more than 50% of cases, tend to be highly pigmented, with a similar percentage (M=40.5%), although lower, in terms of hair colour. The dermatoglyphs, according to Pons, place the Basques among the highest values of the European populations, similar to those of Eastern Europe and Near East Asia.
There is no human group that surpasses the Basque in terms of the frequency of figures in the hypothenar area; and they are differentiated by the horizontality of the lines of the palm of the hand, as among Europeans it is in the extremities where the characteristics are best observed. Two hundred people studied by M. Larrañaga in the Goiherri of Gipuzkoa confirm some of the characteristics mentioned by Pons. All these features of the bodies, heads and faces observed by anthropology over a hundred years provide an overall view of what evolves and what remains in the characters of our people over time: the increase in height, the longer life expectancy, the intensification of iris pigmentation with age, especially in males; and much more, the loss of teeth, a disappearance which, in addition to influencing the lower jaw, also changes physiognomic characters.