Basques Are R1b Steppe People
It was the Romanisation that eventually obliterated Iberian language around the 2nd century.
I think it is very possible that all Iberia and Southwest France, and not just the Basques, kept their original Neolithic languages following the Bronze Age Indo-European invasions.
They would have concentrated on ruling their new land and enjoying their privileges, and left the education of their offspring to the (local) women.
After one, or a few, generation(s) their IE language would have completed disappeared, leaving only the previous Neolithic languages. It is possible, and even expected, that a few loanwords from (Proto-)Celtic entered the non-IE languages of Iberia and Southwest France to fill the gaps in vocabulary for new Bronze Age technologies brought by the Indo-Europeans. This is exactly what we see in the modern Basque vocabulary. I expect that the same happened to all other non-IE languages of the peninsula in the Bronze Age.
"Now, as the legends represent Latiniis, the eponym of the Latini, as king of the Aborigines, it follows that the Latini were Ligurians ... These are the people known to the Roman writers as Ligures, and to the Greeks as Ligyes. As they occupy the same mountainous area as that assigned to the Aborigines by Dionysius, and as Philistus of Syracuse says that the Ligyes were expelled from their homes by the Umbrians, there is no doubt that the Aborigines of Dionysius and Cato are none other than the Ligyes or Ligurians of Philistus and other writers. … Thus according to Roman tradition the Latini were the Aborigines, or, in other words, Ligurians, a tradition of great significance in view of the fact that the populous Romanus spoke not lingua Romana, but lingua Latina. … the language of the Roman empire, was the tongue not of the Sabine conquerers, but of their Plebeian subjects, in other words that Latin is Ligurian. ... Again, although it has hitherto been universally held that the Iberians spoke a non-Aryan tongue, because the Basques who occupy a portion of North-West Spain still continue to do so, yet when we come to examine the evidence it is more probable that the Iberians properly so called, who bordered on the Ligurians in North-Eastem Spain and who are said to have extended at one time as far north as the Loire, did not differ essentially from the Ligurians. For instance, we have just seen that proper names in -sco and -co are beyond all doubt essentially Indo-European suffixes in the Ligurian parts of France and over all Upper and Central Italy. But when we turn to ancient Spain we are confronted with the same suffixes and the closely allied -con- in many of the most famous place-names; e.g. Osca (mod. Huesca) Malaca (Malaga), Tarraco (Tarragona) whilst the same appears in the adjective asturcones, the ancient native name for the horses of Asturia."--Ridgeway, Who Were The Romans?
"Professor Niccolucci described some alleged Ligurian crania, which seemed to show them to have been a round-headed people, and hence, the Professor inferred, of "Turanian" origin. But Professor Sergi insists that the said skulls were only those of modern Modenese, and neither ancient nor Ligurian. His own authentic series of Ligurian skulls proves them, on the contrary, to have been long-headed, with narrow noses, orthognathic"--Ligurians, Iberians, and Siculi; Science, Current Notes on Anthropology, 1892.
"Ligurian tribes, now shorn, in ancient days
First of the long-haired nations, on whose necks.
Once flowed the auburn locks in pride supreme."
--Lucan, Pharsalia
The Sabines seem to have been Celtic people, making the Romans Celtic by race. Which could clear up a whole bunch of questions, yes? The other question is Basque. The Basque are a disharmonious people with Brachycephalic skulls and Dolichocephalic faces, signifying a mixed race. Some of them claim they are the Cro-Magnons... but the C-M had Dolichocephalic skulls and Brachycephalic faces... the opposite of what the Basques have. In both cases, the skull shape had the disharmonic face pasted onto it, so to speak.
Britain first had long-barrows long-skulls. Round skulls came with the Celts. In fact, saying Britain is somehow a Basque plantation, but failing to show any evidence of the Basque language in place-names or inscriptions...
I don't know if you've got threads on Minoan DNA being mtDNA H and I, and YDNA R1b (along with the inevitable overlord-R1a). But if Crete had European DNA, and Ligurians had European DNA... and both DNAs occupy that small slice where the Basques showed up... doesn't it make more sense to assume that H and R1b are indigenous DNA in Spain? Especially since the women never made the trip and therefore never brought H... and would never have taught their children the foreign Basque language... this is how language works. !!!
(The Turanian Basque language must have been imposed upon a small area of indigenous non-Basque people during one of the peninsular draughts? Isn't it really an assumption that the Basque-speakers are originally Basque by race? Languages can be learned.)
Getting back to Britain and its people, we know that inscriptions in Latin were commonplace all over the south of Britain. Some say that the tribal names were just Celtic with Latin endings. I highly doubt that's true. The Cymry traditions tell us they came from the Loire and Armorica. The Loire, as Dawkins pointed out long ago, is the Lloegrians... from whence came the name Lloegrwys to Britain. Since these people had not only the same affinity for writing tombstones in Latin, and had a tribe of the Latin Ligures controlling what is now called England proper, is it really a stretch to think that the original people of Britain were Ligurians?
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Now, since the Basques are proven to be Steppe People, not the Cro-Magnons or Semites, or any other fanciful notion their world-conquerering historiography would have them to be... And since R1b came from the steppes... And since the Basque language is Turanian-Steppe Language... this National Geographic article "A study of 8,000 years of genetics from Spain and Portugal yields a surprisingly complex picture of the inhabitants' ancestry," of March 2019, can forever end the mystery of who the Basques are. They are related to the other Steppe people who are called Germans and Slavics.
So much for their indegenous claims. The fact that their famous historian tells us they have no art, just as the Jews don't, in and of itself proves that the Basques are the polar opposites of the Cro-Magnons, in whose lands they are currently squatting. Why is it that it never fails to be what the invaders do? They move in, supposedly murder every man and manchild, steal their women and their homes, and begin to pretend that they are indigenes.
And since the Steppe people are round-heads, they never killed off all the long-headed men, or the type of the women are taking the land back from the invaders. If anything else is true, the Steppe men drove the immigration of long-heads we find in Britain's long-barrows. We see it time after time, in Britain... the Steppe men move in... don't decimate the male population, and the indigenes move into the mountains and onto rocky promontaries overlooking the Ocean.
The Basques became the Jesuits who murdered people that didn't believe Catholic Dogma. These Cathars and Albiginses and Huguenots were not wiped out either. But the Basques who were witches and killed infants and were cannibals seem to have been related to those called Anthrophagi who lived next to Poland, which both Pliny and Herodotus talk about. They dressed like Scythians but spoke a different language. The Irish say they are Scythians. Strabo says the Irish were cannibals. Yes, it is ancient history, and they probably don't do it anymore. But this speaks to the unbroken chain of Steppe people with their Shamanism, etc.