> I was referring to Greeks and, later, Romans,
> who first met --after the Phoenicians-- the impressive valley gorge
> (=the ibar (?) of natives) of the Ebre as seen from the sea.
>
from Larry Trask, The History of Basque, 331
"
South of the watershed the names are overwhelmingly non-Basque. The
major river here is of course the Ebro, whose name is the Spanish
development of Iberus, the name given to this river by the Romans;
this name is of course the source of the name Iberia, applied to the
whole peninsula. There have been repeated efforts to relate this name
to the Basque ibai 'river', but there is no evidence for Basque speech
in the Ebro valley in Roman times. A few scholars have tried to claim
for the word ibai some kind of ancient pan-European existence by
imputing it to an early 'Mediterranean' or 'Old European' substrate,
but convincing evidence for such a suggestion has not been forthcoming.
"
The latter would be my position.
Torsten