Maps showing (1) The peoples of Novempopulania, and (2) The Roman provincial divisions of Gaul, with Gallia Aquitania shown in bluish green. ⚜️🇫🇷🏳️

As Caesar tells is, the region of Gaul consisted of three divisions: Gaul proper, or “Celtic Gaul”, Belgic Gaul, and Aquitaine. In the case of Aquitaine, it took its name from a non-Celtic, non-Indo-European people who’d been native to western Europe since remote prehistory. The Aquitani were essentially identical to the Basque people of Spain. For this reason, the area they inhabited —roughly between the Pyrenees and the river Garonne— later came to be known as “Gascony”, from a French word for Basque people; “Gascons”. By the time (1st century B.C.) the Romans documented them, the Aquitanians were confined to this small region called Novempopulania (Latin: “Country of the Nine Peoples”). But early in the 1st century AD, emperor Augustus reorganised the provinces of Gaul and vastly expanded Aquitaine, all the way to the river Loire and the Cévennes mountains. This may have been based on a long lost memory that the territory of the Aquitani had once been much greater, but that they’d been greatly encroached upon by the Celts, the latter having conquered most of the former’s ancient homeland and pushed them beyond the Garonne. Some Celtic peoples, like the Bituriges Vivisci, Volcae, and Nitiobroges had even occupied lands beyond the Garonne, further encroaching upon the natives; although the name of the Nitiobroges (Gaulish for “natives”) implies that they were perhaps originally Aquitanians who simply became assimilated to Gaulish culture. In any case, the archaeological record seems indeed to reflect this narrative: That Celtic peoples (Tumulus Culture, Urnfield Culture, La Tène Culture) expanded gradually westward across France —from an original homeland centered in the German Rhineland and Upper Danube— absorbing and intermarrying with an indigenous culture of megalith-builders. The Aquitanians and Basques would thus seem to represent the remnant of the megalithic cultures of pre-Celtic Europe. Oddly, however, they’ve been shown to have so much Celtic DNA (and vice-versa) as to be hardly at all distinguishable. Intermarriage and assimilation between the two peoples was protracted and thorough, yet somehow the two communities retained different languages, customs, and identities.

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