Barcelona Update

    We finally connected with the guy with the boat—actually it turns out to be three guys in Austria—

and we are heading out to the Canaries tomorrow. More specifically, we are going to Arrecife on the Island of Lanzarote. It is auspicious that the boat has an Inuit name: Quinuituq; it means “deep patience.” But Mike is impatient!

   Mike and our landlord met yesterday with the city department that issued his empadrimiento, saying he has an official residence. Just one more step remains to get his resident ID card: meeting with the police to issue it.

   Our major activity the past two weeks was studying Spanish: five hours of class each morning, and a couple hours of homework in the afternoon. We also spend hours each week in the library—we love libraries!—either working on our own computers, or checking out books and movies. I am the proud owner of a Barcelona library card. We also do a lot of walking around the city and in the hills behind Barcelona. We are endlessly fascinated with the contrast between a European city and an American city: the abundance of pedestrian-oriented public spaces, fine architecture and public sculpture.

   Each evening we go out to a bar for a glass of red wine. While we mostly eat on the cheap, every once in a while we have a meal worth writing home about. This week, we went tapas bar-hopping, working off a list Mike tore out of a travel magazine. The Bar del Pla had the most amazing tapas ever! One was thinly sliced mushrooms, with some kind of roasted veggie and thinly sliced strawberries, doused in a wasabi-and-something-else sauce, topped with a spicy Japanese green sprig. The other was crunchy mackerel with grilled eggplant and red pepper, all elegantly seasoned. We look forward to introducing you to all our favorite places when you come visit us.

More interesting than what we are doing is the latest archeogenetic science about prehistoric Iberian people, hot off the press in March. Here is a piece that I wrote about it: 

Ongi etorri Euskal Herria. (Welcome to Basque Country.) Basque is the oldest living language in Europe, with no root connection to any other language. Archaeogenetic research shows that present-day Iberians are descendants of two distinct hunter-gatherer peoples that shared the peninsula at the end of the last Ice Age. The Franco-Cantabrian civilization is famous for scores of cave paintings throughout the Pyrenean region, dating from 40,000 BC to 10,000 BC. An influx of Neolithic farmers from Anatolia about 7500 years ago introduced not only a more abundant livelihood, but also a radical shift in genetics, contributing 90% of the subsequent genetic pool. About 4500 years ago, a migration of people from the steppes of present-day Russia and Ukraine brought horses and wagons and left their genetic inheritance, about 40% of the gene pool. Curiously enough, the steppe inheritance is all in the male line: nearly 100% of the Y-chromosomes are from the steppe peoples, while the Neolithic female farmers apparently intermarried and continued to procreate. The archeogenetic research for the Iron Age shows that Iberia continued to be a crossroads, with people arriving from northern and central Europe and north Africa. With the rise of the Roman Empire in Iberia, people from southern Europe and the Middle East started showing up and mixing in, genetically and culturally.        

   Basques were the only culture group in Iberia to survive intact the Roman conquest (centuries 3^rd-1^st BC) and the Indo-European expansion (from which modern-day Latins, Germanics, Slavs, Celts, Greeks and others descended, about 2500BC). Originally, Basque civilization was centered in Navarre. During the Roman era the Basque tribes had an alliance with Rome that allowed them to maintain their state and identity, although exchange with the Latins gradually eroded Basque culture, particularly in the central plains which were rich with agriculture and trade. With the decline in the Roman Empire in the 5^th century AD, the several remaining proto-Basque tribes joined together under the leadership of the Vascones for common defense against the invading Germanic tribes. Battles on other fronts, however, weakened the Visgoth empire such that the Vascones were able to expand their territory north to Bordeaux and east to Catalonia. The glory days came to an end in 1035AD following the death of King Sancho III of Navarre, when the Vascone kingdom fractured. The Moorish invasion of Iberia began in 711 and lasted 700 years, leaving strong genetic and cultural influences in the region generally, but very little trace in the remaining Basque strongholds. Christian kingdoms in the north resisted the Moors and gradually battled southward, completing the reconquista in the battle of Granada in 1492. The ensuing Golden Age of the Spanish Empire accelerated the cultural assimilation of Basques. By the 16^th century, Castilian had largely replaced Euskara (the Basque language) throughout the former realm, except in the mountainous and relatively isolated region of the western Pyrenees. The region is now known in Spanish as Pays Basque.