Did the Neanderthals become the Basques?

Homo sapiens first arrived on the Iberian peninsula during the Upper Paleolithic period that starts the process of replacement of Mousterian industries by the Aurignacian culture. A number of researchers suggest that the Ebro river functioned for extended periods of time as a major biological/cultural frontier that separated the anatomically modern humans in the Franco-Cantabrian region to the north from the rest of the Iberian peninsula which is occupied by Neandertals for several thousand years longer. As modern humans settled in the northern territories from around 40,000 years BCE, earliest evidence from the south dates to between 34,000 and 32,000 years BCE. The term Vasco-Cantabrian is now often used for the coastal area of the modern Basque Country and neighbouring Cantabria.