my search for the basque millers numbering system

How I ended up reading a book from the 1980’s about molinology in Spain.

I’ve recently received an email from TIMS (The International Molinological Society) about paying my membership dues. How did I get here? Well, it all started a few months ago, I don’t know where, but I saw some internet posts about how up until recently there was a law in Iceland that allowed them to kill Basques on sight. I thought this really must not be true, so I started researching it and found out two main things: One is that it WAS indeed true, the law was enacted in the early 1600s; and the other was that the Basques came from a region of Europe in between Spain and France?!

How did some Spaniards end up in Iceland?!

Well, the answer is pretty simple actually; whales. The Basques were the first successful commercial whalers in history, and apparently got all the way to Iceland in search of them. The law was enacted because some Basque whalers shipwrecked in Iceland and began stealing food from local villages. This was heavily disliked by the locals obviously, so they were banned from the country and the law to kill them was not repealed until 400 years later in 2015. The Icelandic people were whalers as well, and through whaling friendships and trade relations a Basque-Icelandic pidgin formed.

Pigeons?!

No, pidgins. A pidgin is when two peoples speaking different languages collide, and to get over the language barrier, a “new” language is formed by mashing the two peoples’ languages together. This type of language often uses a simplified form of the grammar of both languages, and uses words from both also. Naturally, I wanted to learn more about both languages that make up this pidgin. Icelandic was cool (no pun intended) but not particularly interesting especially because it was on the Germanic branch of Indo-European languages (the same branch English is on). However, upon seeing the Wikipedia page for Basque I was astounded. It is spoken in the Basque Country, a region between Spain and France, but has NO relation to Proto-Indo-European.

Proto-Indo-European?!

Proto-Indo-European (or rather humorously, “PIE”) is a reconstructed language from the distant past that ALL other languages spoken in Europe are derived from. All languages.. Except for Basque. It is theorized that the Basque language actually predates PIE. It also isn’t related to any other proto-languages anywhere else in the world. It isn’t just unrelated to other European languages, it isn’t related to any other language on the planet! One of the unique features that caught my eye in the Wikipedia page was a section on their base-20 numbering system.

20? That's a high number!

Most languages (like English) use a decimal (base-10) numbering system. Which means that you count the digits 0 - 9 and then move on to the next column. Basque uses a vigesimal (base-20) numbering system, which means that you count digits 0 - 19 (there are independent words for digits 0 - 19, which is a bit hard to wrap your head around), and then move to the next column. What really caught my eye about this part was a really awesome orthography (orthography is the system of writing a language uses) for this numbering system used by some millers in the Basque Country. The system looked very unlike anything else I’d ever seen, it uses symbols and the combination of symbols to write its numbers. Even more mysteriously, the Wikipedia page listed no specific information about the history of the system other than that it was “of unknown origin”. On top of that, there was only one source listed for that section of the Wikipedia page.

So, what was the source?!

Well, that’s exactly what I want to know! The source did not contain a link, but rather the title of a book and the International Standard Book Number (ISBN). The book is called “Tratado de Molinología – Los Molinos de Guipúzcoa'' which translates to “A Treatise on Molinology - The Millers of Guipúzcoa”. The book was written by Aguirre Sorondo and published in 1988. This could have been a valuable resource in my hunt for more extensive information on the subject! However, the book was almost $60 dollars online, and the closest one available in a library was in the state of Arizona. The only pdf’s of the book online was of pages 746-750, and this excerpt did not even mention the Basque Country mills, much less their unique numbering system.

What next?!

Well, I decided to do some more googling. I came across an image on somebody's obscure Basque-related blog, in this image, the text “The counting system used by millers in the Basque Country. Adapted from Errotarien Kontatzeko Sistema” appeared, alongside some other text in what I presume to be Basque. A lead! Once again, just the name of a book, but maybe this book was one I could actually read! I found the book, which turned out to be more of an academic paper. The full title is “Errotarien Kontatzeko Sistema (Dima. Bizkaia)” which translates (from Basque) to “Millers Counting System (Dima. Bizkaia)”. It even contained a summary of the text at the top written in English (and a third in Spanish) which claims that “This work proposes a contextualized interpretation of the miller’s numbers found in Dima, [Bizkaia]... and their possible relationship with the oral numeration system in Basque”. However, the entire rest of the text is written in Basque. Regrettably, having no friends who speak Basque, I had to machine translate the document.

And what secrets did it contain?!

Well, it had information about a specific hydraulic mill (as in, a mill powered by water) from the middle ages. If I understand the badly translated text correctly, the first confirmed usage in written text they could find of the numbering system is in a church document from the year 1053. But the paper clarifies that the system is ancient and that is very very likely not the first use of it. The paper goes on to provide examples of variation in symbols, and charts showing how they are used. The paper also says that despite some similarities to roman numerals at first glance (numbers up to 4 being denoted with simple vertical lines), it has no connection to them, especially because they possibly predate Rome by thousands of years. The paper concludes by saying that there is definitely a link between this written system and the oral system used by the Basques. Then, rather annoyingly, it states that further research should be done on the subject.

Well, then I guess that’s it.

I have a resource that can tell me how to write numbers (up until 100, it’s hypothesized the system never goes higher than that because they didn’t have to deal with such large quantities at the time) in the system. But not exactly where it comes from, or how old the numbers carved into stone that have been found are. I suppose to find more information on the history of this system I will either have to spend $60 on a copy of that book and hope that it contains more information than this other paper specifically about it, or do the field research myself.. Does anyone have 60 dollars or a plane ticket to Spain?

Addressing that reference to TIMS at the beginning.

During my research I somehow came across The International Molinological Society. I signed up thinking I was just subscribing to their free online newsletter, I was mistaken. My membership application was accepted, and they are now asking for the yearly dues. It’s fairly cheap, so I’m seriously considering joining TIMS at this point. Anyway, thanks for reading!

Sources:

“Errotarien Kontatzeko Sistema (Dima. Bizkaia)” by Laratzu Taldea (1996)

A Wikipedia passage sourced from “Tratado de Molinología – Los Molinos de Guipúzcoa” by Aguirre Sorondo (1988)

“The Slaying of the Spaniards” by Zachary Melton (2023)

"Indo-European languages" by Warren Cowgill and Jay Jasanoff (2024)

“How the Basque language has survived” by Nina Porzucki (2018)

Image sourced from Wikipedia, by user Akerbeltz (2010)