Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tombseye (talk | contribs) at 00:59, 3 January 2006 (your sources don't say anything other than talk about Germanic invasions which doesn't refute genetic research). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article is about the Spanish as an ethnic group. For information on residents or nationals of Spain, see demographics of Spain. The term "Spaniard" can also refer to a common generic name of plants in the Aciphylla genus in New Zealand.

The Spanish people or Spaniards are the ethnic group or nation native to Spain, in the Iberian peninsula of southwestern Europe.

Background

Spaniards are a Southern European Mediterranean population fused with Nordic elements. The earliest inhabitants of Spain are believed to have been the Iberians who arrived in the region between the fourth and third millennium BCE from North Africa. These early Iberians may have had some relationship with the Basques who are largely beileved to have been an aboriginal population that may have existed throughout Europe before the coming of Indo-European-speaking peoples in the first millenium BCE. The Celtic tribes (which became a localized offshoot termed Celtiberians) arrived in northern Spain between the 9th and 6th century BCE. The seafaring Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians successively settled along the Mediterranean coast and founded trading colonies there over a period of several centuries. Later on, the Romans annexed Spain by the second century BCE. Roman culture would later "Romanize" the Visigoths who invaded the country around 415 CE.

The Vandals and their subordinates the Alans arrived around 409, but were displaced to North Africa by another Germanic tribe, the Visigoths became a dominant power in the region after invading the peninsula around the fifth century CE.

By 711, the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Moors (who settled there for almost 8 centuries, until 1492). The Moors, a group of Muslims mainly of Berber origin with prominent Arab tribes, also converted many locals to Islam and contributed much to the culture of Spain, but the vast majority of Muslims and Jews were expelled after the Christian reconquest or Reconquista or forced to convert to Catholicism along with Sephardic Jews.

Modern Spaniards are linguistically Latin, while their ancestors are derived from a variety of Iberian, Basque, Phoenician, Greek, Celtic, Roman, Germanic, and Berber elements. Genetic genealogy testing has revealed that most Spaniards reflect a Mediterranean affinity with some Nordic admixture and negligible sub-Saharan genetic inflow.

Genetic research

According to the latest genetic research, Spaniards are largely a Mediterranean people who have seen some admixture from various invaders including Celts, Romans, and Germanic tribes. Affinities with other Mediterranean populations seems probable as a study funded by the Spanish government,

found that the proportion of the genetic variance that can be accounted for between the NW African and Iberian populations for mtDNA is 0.86% (p = 0.053), 1.89% (p = 0.028) for Alu insertion polymorphisms, and 35.2% (p = 0.024) for the Y chromosome. It is not surprising to find that the results show clear differences between male and female lineages due to the already described sexual differential migration patterns for worldwide human populations.

These results showed substantial gene flow largely stemming from the Berbers, while another study from the University of Chicago elaborates as to the north-south divide as northern Spaniards also show a substantial degree of similarity their northern neighbors in France and reveals the extent of Celtic contributions to the Spanish population. The study's conclusions are ambiguous as the results show that The recolonization of western Europe from an Iberian refugium after the retreat of the ice sheets 15,000 years ago could explain the common genetic legacy in the area. The links that Spain has with northern Europe may actually pre-date the Celts and Germanic invasions or reveal a high degree of similarity as Celtic tribes from northern Spain left and colonized Britain and Ireland: The affinities of the areas where Celtic languages are spoken, or were formerly spoken, are generally with other regions in the Atlantic zone, from northern Spain to northern Britain. Although some level of Iron Age immigration into Britain and Ireland could probably never be ruled out by the use of modern genetic data, these results point toward a distinctive Atlantic genetic heritage with roots in the processes at the end of the last Ice Age.

Much of the genetic evidence points to a majority Spanish population that is predominantly derived from an early post Ice Age group which was modified over the centuries by various invaders, but it appears doubtful that Spain was drastically altered by the small colonies that followed the invasions of the Celts who largely mixed with the Basques and Iberians.

Language

Linguistically, the Spanish language is a Romance language and as such Spaniard are considered a Latin people. The legacy of the Romans was thus pivotal, while the Arabic input of the Moors can also been seen in modern Spanish vocabulary. Other changes in Spanish have come from borrowings from English and French.

The number of speakers of Castilian Spanish, as a mother tongue, is roughly 35.6 million, while the vast majority of other groups in Spain such as the Catalans and Basques also speak Spanish as a second language, which boosts the number of Spanish speakers to 43.9 million.

Spanish was also exported to the Americas and is spoken by millions from the U.S. to Argentina.

Religion

The vast majority of Spaniards are Catholics, while small minorities of Protestants and other religious minorities are also found in Spain. An increasing number of Spaniards also profess no religious preferences or are atheists and/or agnostics.

Other related peoples

The descendants of Spaniards can be found throughout the Hispanic nations of Latin America in the form of creoles, mestizos and mulattos. A small but important Spanish-mestiso minority (approx. 1%) is also to be found in the Philippines.

Spain itself consists of various regional sub-nationalities including the Castilians (the majority who most strongly identify with a Spanish identity), the Catalans (speakers of a distinct yet related Romance language who are centered around the city of Barcelona), the Basques, and the Galicians. Regional diversity is important to many Spaniards and some regions (other than the ones associated with the different nationalities) have strong local identities and dialects, such as Asturias, Aragon, the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands and Andalusia.

References

• Joining the Pillars of Hercules: mtDNA Sequences Show Multidirectional Gene Flow in the Western Mediterranean
• Mitochondrial DNA analysis of Northwest African populations reveals genetic exchanges with European, Near-Eastern, and sub-Saharan populations
• The Longue Dure'e of Genetic Ancestry-Multiple Genetic Marker Systems

and Celtic Origins on the Atlantic Facade of Europe

• Proving History Through Science -- Phoenician’s Reborn through the DNA "Alphabet," the Y Chromosome
• Castro, Americo. The Spaniards: An Introduction to Their History (Univ. of Calif. Press 1980).
• Chapman, Robert. Emerging Complexity: The Later Pre-History of South-East Spain, Iberia, and the West Mediterranean (Cambridge 1990).
• Goodwin, Godfrey. Islamic Spain (Chronicle Books 1990).
• Harrison, Richard. Spain at the Dawn of History (Thames & Hudson 1988).
• James, Edward. Visigothic Spain (Oxford 1980).

See also

• List of Spaniards
• List of Catalans
• Demographics of Spain

• Ethnic groups in Europe
• Major European Ethnic Groups
• Spanish people