Page 28: The Basque History of the World

The Basque History of the World, by Mark Kurlansky, is a great book.  It is one of those books that proves that if you move your lens a little bit and look at history from a different angle, it is possible to draw very different conclusions from what you've seen.  It's a perspective changer.

Kurlansky has also written two other, somewhat related, perspective changers: Cod and Salt.  Salt was the first one that I read, and for me it was a mind-bending experience.  In a nutshell, Salt makes a persuasive argument that the pursuit of salt created the modern world.  Back in the day, people in a local area were fairly self-sufficient because almost everything they knew enough to want was locally available.  Then somebody figured out that salt could be used to preserve food.  Suddenly, salt was in high demand.  But salt was not generally available, it only came from specific places.  To get salt, people without salt had to dream up stuff that the people with salt wanted so that they could trade.  Poof! there was a market.  While there had always been trade, it had always been sort of optional -- "hey, that's a nice little bowl, how about I give you this knife for it" or "I'm sick of rice, how about I swap you for some of that wheat".  But with salt, it was different.  People felt they needed salt.  Anyway, the historical string played itself out and everything in modern history, up to and including the ShamWow, can be, more or less, traced back to salt.

I closed the book and said to myself, "nobody ever mentioned salt to me in school."  There was this irreducibly simple concept out there that explains so much, and it was practically a secret.  I wondered if there were other simple secrets out there of similar import.

The Basques, as Kurlansky obviously saw, are a similar story.  They have been deeply involved in all sorts of seriously humanity-changing things and nobody ever really talks about them.  They were probably the first Europeans in America (they were chasing Cod, which is one of the most important factors in the development of the United States), as mercenaries they helped build the Roman Empire, as evangelists they were critical to the growth of the Catholic Church, the list goes on.

But the Basques are difficult to explain:  They are genetically distinct from Europeans, their language is ancient and unique, and their culture is highly distinctive.  The rumors Dudley refers to (Lost Tribe of Israel, the Euskera language being spoken in the Garden of Eden) are true rumors, if not necessarily true facts.  What is certainly true is that the Basque culture is very, very old and relatively unspoiled.  It gives us some clues to humanity's "original nature".  But not very clear or consistent clues.

As Kurlansky says, the Basques are an enigma.  But most enigmas are fun to think about but irrelevant.  The Basques are a relevant enigma.  If for no other reason than the fact that their struggles have always reflected those of the wider world.  As Kurlansky writes:

"When Basques first began appearing on the stage of recorded history, even before there was a name for them, they were observed acting like Basques, playing out the same roles that they have been playing ever since: defending their land and culture, making complex choices about the degree of independence that was needed to preserve their way of life, while looking to the rest of the world for commercial opportunities to ensure their prosperity."

Sound familiar?