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One theory of the origins for the Basques has them arriving along with the Indo-Europeans four thousand years ago. There have been later examples of such an event. During the Germanic migrations that swept Europe after the fall of Rome, for instance, almost all the tribes were Indo-Europeans, except for instance the Huns and the Avars.
Furthermore it is now believed the Indo-Europeans began their invasion of Europe from a position just north of, and between, the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. South of this region is the Caucasus, a small and mountainous region home to some thirty separate languages, from two separate language groups of which there are no other relatives. Similarities between Basque and the Caucasian language groups have been advocated on a number of occasions. It has been argued that a group of Caucasians could have joined the invasion of Europe by the Indo-Europeans that was departing just north of them. However, the relationship between Basque and the Caucasian languages is vociferously denied by authors such as Larry Trask who see no evidence of a connection (and most modern scholars agree with this view), leaving little evidence for this theory.
A second argument against the idea of the Basques arriving sometime around the arrival of the Indo-Europeans is archeological. There is no evidence of a new group of people arriving in Basqueland at this time. While the traditions changed, for instance the building of dolmens slowly faded out, these changes seem far more like a single evolving society than a replacement by new groups of people.
The only archeological evidence for an invasion of Basqueland dates some 40.000 years ago when Cro-Magnon people first arrived in Europe and superseded the Homo neanderthalensis. It is possible that the ancestors of the Basques first arrived in Europe at this time, but the archeological evidence is shaky. Another possibility is that the precursor of the Basque language may have arrived with the advance of agriculture, some 6.000 years ago.
Regardless of which of these theories (if either of them) is correct, it is quite likely that the Basques arrived before the Indo-Europeans and thus that they are the oldest surviving people continuously inhabiting a particular location in Europe. It is believed that they have lived in their present location for thousands of years, unmoved by any of the calamities of war, plague, or famine that destroyed all the other ancient civilizations of Europe, a relatively small group of people surviving when many others were overwhelmed by the waves of invaders that have swept Europe. A number of Basque writers seeking to explain this have speculated about racial superiority, but the endurance of the Basques can also be explained by luck: they happened to be in the right place over and over again.
The Basques either chose their easily defended home in the Pyrenees or, what is more likely, were forced into it at some time in the past. It is common for mountainous regions to remain as bastions of an all-but-vanished group of people. When the Celts of Europe were overwhelmed by the Germanic peoples from Scandinavia and northernmost Germany, and attacked by the Roman Empire from the south, the only areas left speaking Celtic languages were the isolated island of Ireland and a number of mountain bastions, which still retain Celtic speakers to the present day. These regions include Brittany in the northwest of France as well as Scotland and Wales in the British Isles. In these regions the Celtic cultures have survived fifteen hundred years after the assimilation of others into other cultures.
The Basque homeland is well suited to survival. Its low mountains are combined with dense forests and heavy vegetation to make the region almost impassable to outsiders (although this didn't stop the Way of St James, connecting Santiago de Compostela to mainland Europe), but still temperate enough to support a large agricultural base. Despite this growth, the soil is of much lower quality than the surrounding plains in Spain and France, leaving the area a much less tempting target for invaders. For invaders bent on plunder, the Basque areas have few reserves of precious metals, especially in comparison to the gold reserves to the west in Spain or to the wealth in Gascony just to the north of Basqueland. The Basques seem to have ended up in the best locale for uninterrupted survival on the continent.
The first two known invasions the Basques survived were those of the Indo-Europeans and then the Celts. These two invasions occurred in prehistory and the secret of the Basque survival is only hinted at by limited archeological evidence.
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