Iberia again

[Alexey Solodovnikov]

Dear readers,

Excuse me please for the crossposting. This is on the
"Iberia question" raised by Paul Goetghebeur last week and caused
some other posters on this topic. In few messages it was
clearly explained where and when was Iberia in the Caucasus. So,
it is clear why botanists and zoologists use "iberic*"
epithet for species described from the Casucasus (Transcaucasia).

However, those messages did not reflect another side of the
problem, namely how related are Caucasian and Spanish Iberias.

I did some superficial cheking in the geographical/ethnographical
reference literature (Russian; which was handy in the library;
not digging into special scientific papers on the subject, listed
there as References), and found the following: Caucasian Iberia derived
from the ancient (antique times) ethnic tribe "Ibers" (or "Iberians", not
sure about translation to English), which was widely distributed in Europe
including Iberian peninsula also (the name of this peninsula is
derived from this tribe too). This tribe decreased, reduced
its range, and dissapeared, since other tribes were expanding. It is
stated that (Caucasian) georgians, and (Spanish) basks are derivates from those
Ibers (or Iberians). As I understand, basks and georgians could be called by
taxonomists "similar based on plesiomorphies". Hence, Caucasian and
Spanish Iberias can be explained as such, very old, plesiomorphic
similarity.

Warning: I just browsed some articles in the reference books around
the terms "Iberia", "Iberians", "Georgia", "Gergians", "Caucasus", "Basks",
etc. gathering together pieces of information. Not more.

Alexey.
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Alexey Solodovnikov
Laboratory of Insect Taxonomy
Zoological Institute Rus. Acad. Sci.
Universitetskaya nab. 1, St. Petersburg
199034 RUSSIA
phone: +7 812 328 12 12
fax:   +7 812 114 04 44
e-mail: asolodovnikov at mail.ru
http://www.zin.ru/Animalia/Coleoptera/eng/solodovn.htm
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