ava.
These names are drawn from the territorial subdivisions, although the
dialects do not exactly correspond with them.

_Ethnology and Anthropology._--The earliest notices of the geography of
Spain, from the 5th century B.C., represent Spain as occupied by a
congeries of tribes distinguished mainly as Iberi, Celtiberi and Celts.
These had no cohesion together, and unless temporarily united against some
foreign foe, were at war with one another and were in constant movement;
the ruder tribes being driven northwards by the advancing tide of
Mediterranean civilization. The tribes in the south in Baetica had,
according to Trogus and Strabo, written laws, poems of ancient date and a
literature. Of this nothing has reached us. We have only some inscriptions,
legends on coins, marks on pottery and on megalithic monuments, in
alphabets slightly differing, and belonging to six geographical districts.
These still await an interpreter; but they show that a like general
language was once spoken through the whole of Spain, and for a short
distance on [v.03 p.0487] the northern slope of the Pyrenees. The character
of the letters is clearly of Levant origin, but the particular alphabets,
to which each may be referred, and their connexion, if any, with the
Basque, are still undetermined. It was early remarked by the classical
scholars among the Basques after the Renaissance that certain names in the
ancient toponymy of Spain, though transcribed by Greek and Latin writers,
_i.e._ by foreigners, ignorant of the language, yet bear a strong
resemblance to actual place-names in Basque (_e.g._ Iliberis, Iriberry);
and in a few cases (Mondiculeia, Mendigorry; Iluro, Oloron) the site itself
shows the reason of the name. Andres de Poza (1587), Larramendi (1760),
Juan B. Erro (1806) and others had noted some of these facts, but it was W.
von Humboldt (1821) who first aroused the attention of Europe to them. This
greater extension of a people speaking a language akin to the Basque
throughout Spain, and perhaps in Sicily and Sardinia, has been accepted by
the majority of students, though some competent Basque scholars deny it;
and the certain connexion of the Basques, either with the Iberians or
Celtiberians, whether in race or language, cannot be said to be
conclusively proved as long as the so-called Celtiberian inscriptions
remain uninterpreted. (See also IBERIANS.)

After so many centuries of close contact and interpenetration with other
pe