A Basque San Francisco

Via de SFGate.com and the San Francisco Chronicle come two stories regarding the Basque presence in San Francisco.

The first story has to do with the Basque Center and its sappling of the Gernikako Arbola, the Oak of Gernika:

Rooted in the Bay Area

In South San Francisco there stands an oak with a very special heritage: It grew from an acorn taken from the Tree of Gernika in Spain, the most revered symbol of Basque nationalism. It was under this tree that the kings of Castile traditionally vowed to respect the laws of the Basques.

Planted in 1982 and now thriving, the new oak is also a potent symbol of the way Basque immigrants have transplanted their culture to the Bay Area and kept it alive. It stands outside the large Basque Cultural Center -- Gure Euskal Etxea to native speakers -- a gathering place for local Basques and also a popular restaurant open to the general public.

The article contains a little known historic fact:

The Basque presence in the Bay Area dates back to the arrival of the very first Europeans. In fact it was a Basque, Juan Bautista de Anza, who in 1776 chose the site for what would become San Francisco.

The second article delves into the great mystery, just what the heck is a Basque:

Spanish Provinces Reveal Old and New

Anna Intxausti doesn't look like a Cro-Magnon, but she might sound like one.

Intxausti is a Basque, and her language is the oldest and most enigmatic in all of Europe. Hardly anyone who wasn't born to it can master it. The Basques like to say that the devil once tried, and after seven years managed only three words -- all curses.

Over the centuries linguists have tried to link it to any number of other languages -- including, weirdly, Japanese -- and failed. Euskara, as the Basques call it, has no known linguistic relative. It is an orphan tongue.

After studying blood types, Rh factors and skull shapes, many anthropologists now believe the Basques to be the last surviving descendants of the Cro-Magnons, the earliest homo sapiens in Europe.

Another intriguing clue comes from their language: Many of the words used today for tools -- "knife," "ax," "hoe," etc. -- have as their root the word "stone." When you hear people like Intxausti speak, you might be hearing the language of the cave dwellers who hunted wooly mammoths during the Pleistocene era.

So there you have it.

For you own benefit, I filed both articles at Artxiboak.

Gero arte!

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