Origin of the Albanians

The origin of the Albanians has been for some time a matter of dispute among historians. Most of them conclude that they are descendants of populations of the prehistoric Balkans, such as the Illyrians, Dacians or Thracians. Little is known about these peoples, and they blended into one another in Thraco-Illyrian and Daco-Thracian contact zones even in antiquity.

The Albanians first appear in the historical record in Byzantine sources of the late 11th century. At this point, they are already fully Christianized. Very little evidence of pre-Christian Albanian culture survives and Albanian mythology and folklore as it presents itself is notoriously syncretized from various sources, especially showing Greek influence.

Regarding the classification of the Albanian language, it forms a separate branch of Indo-European, belonging to the satem group, and its late attestation, the first records dating to the 15th century, makes it difficult for historical linguistics to make confident statements on its genesis.

Studies in genetic anthropology show that the Albanians share the same ancestry as most other European peoples.

Place of origin
The place where the Albanian language was formed is uncertain, but analysis has suggested that it was in a mountainous region, rather than in a plain or seacoast : while the words for plants and animals characteristic of mountainous regions are entirely original, the names for fish and for agricultural activities (such as ploughing) are borrowed from other languages.

It can also be presumed that the Albanians did not live in Dalmatia, because the Latin influence over Albanian is of Eastern Romance origin, rather than of Dalmatian origin. This influence includes Latin words exhibiting idiomatic expressions and changes in meaning found only in Eastern Romance and not in other Romance languages. Adding to this the many words found in Romanian with Albanian cognates (see Eastern Romance substratum), it may be assumed that Romanians and Albanians lived in close proximity at one time. Generally, the areas where this might have happened are considered to be regions varying from Transylvania, what is now Eastern Serbia (the region around Naissus and the Morava valley), Kosovo and Northern Albania.

However, most agricultural terms in Romanian are of Latin origin, but not the terms related to city activities — indicating that Romanians were an agricultural people in the low plains, as opposed to Albanians, who were originally shepherds in the highlands.

Some scholars even explain the gap between the Bulgarian and Serbian languages by postulating an Albanian-Romanian buffer-zone east of the Morava river. Although an intermediary Serbian dialect exists, it was formed only later, after the Serbian expansion to the east.

Another argument that sustains a northern origin of the Albanians is the relatively small number of words of Greek origin, even though Southern Illyria was neighboring the Classical Greek civilization and there was a number of Greek colonies along the Illyrian coastline.Several Illyrian tribes had even become bilingual early on such as the Taulantii and the Bylliones.South Illyria was called Epirus Nova by the Romans is considered to have become Greek due to colonization by Greeks and Hellenization of the natives,  to the point where the Romans called it Illyria Graeca .This further supports a Northern origin for the Albanians.

Arbanon
While the exonym Albania for the general region inhabited by the Albanians does hark back to the Roman era, and possibly an Illyrian tribe, the name was lost within the Albanian language, the Albanian endonym being shqiptar, from the term for the Albanian language, shqip, a derivation of the verb shqipoj "to speak clearly", perhaps ultimately a loan from Latin excipio.

In the 2nd century BC, the History of the World written by Polybius, mentions a city named Arbon in present day central Albania. The people who lived there were called Arbanios and Arbanitai. In the 1st century AD, Pliny mentions an Illyrian tribe named Olbonenses. In the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy, the geographer and astronomer from Alexandria, drafted a map of remarkable significance for the history of Illyria. This map shows the city of Albanopolis (located Northeast of Durrës). Ptolemy also mentions the Illyrian tribe named Albanoi, who lived around this city. In the 6th century AD, Stephanus of Byzantium in his important geographical dictionary entitled Ethnica (Εθνικά) mention a population called abroi from Adria Taulantii and a city in Illyria called Arbon, with its inhabitants called arbonios and arbonites.

In the 12th to 13th centuries, Byzantine writers use the words Arbanon for a principality in the region of Kruja.

Byzantine references to "Albanians"

 * In History written in 1079-1080, Byzantine historian Michael Attaliates referred to the Albanoi as having taken part in a revolt against Constantinople in 1043 and to the Arbanitai as subjects of the duke of Dyrrachium. It is disputed, however, whether that refers to Albanians in an ethnic sense.
 * The earliest Serbian source mentioning "Albania" (Ar'banas') is a charter by Stefan Nemanja, dated 1198, which lists the region of Pilot (Pulatum) among the parts Nemanja conquered from Albania (ѡд Арьбанась Пилоть, "de Albania Pulatum").
 * 1285 in Dubrovnik (Ragusa) a document states: "Audivi unam vocem clamantem in monte in lingua albanesca" (I heard a voice crying in the mountains in the Albanian language). It is unclear, however, whether this sentence refers to the Albanian language (or to which one of its two dialects), or whether it denotes another language spoken in the geographical or political region of Albania, such as Slavic, Greek or Italian.
 * Arbanasi people are recorded as being 'half-believers' (non-Orthodox Christians) and speaking their own language in the Fragment of Origins of Nations between 1000-1018 by an anonymous author in a Bulgarian text of the 11th century.
 * Arbanitai of Arbanon are recorded in an account by Anna Comnena of the troubles in that region during the reign of her father Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118) by the Normans.

Albanian endonym
The word Shqiptar, by which Albanians today refer to themselves since the Ottoman times, was recorded for the first time in the 14th century, and it appears to have been a family name (Schipudar, Scapuder, Schepuder) in the city of Drivast.

First attestation of the Albanian language
The first document in the Albanian language (as spoken in the region around Mat) was recorded in 1462 by Paulus Angelus (whose name was later Albanized to Pal Engjëll), the archbishop of the catholic Archdiocese of Durazzo.

Paleo-Balkanic predecessors
While Albanian (shqip) ethnogenesis clearly postdates the Roman era, an ultimate composition from prehistoric populations is widely held plausible, already because of the isolated position of the Albanian language within Indo-European.

The three chief candidates considered by historians are Illyrian, Dacian, or Thracian, though there were other non-Greek groups in the ancient Balkans, including Paionians (who lived north of Macedon) and Agrianians. The Illyrian language and the Thracian language are often considered to have been on different Indo-European branches. Not much is left of the old Illyrian, Dacian or Thracian tongues, making it difficult to match Albanian with them.

There is debate whether the Illyrian language was a centum or a satem language. It is also uncertain whether Illyrians spoke a homogeneous language or rather a collection of different but related languages that were wrongly considered the same language by ancient writers. Some of those tribes, along with their language, are no longer considered Illyrian. The same is sometimes said of the Thracian language. For example, based on the toponyms and other lexical items, Thracian and Dacian were probably different but related languages.

In the early half of the 20th century, many scholars thought that Thracian and Illyrian were one language branch, but due to the lack of evidence, most linguists are skeptical and now reject this idea, and usually place them on different branches.

The origins debate is often politically charged, and to be conclusive more evidence is needed. Such evidence unfortunately may not be easily forthcoming because of a lack of sources. Scholars are beginning to move away from a single-origin scenario of Albanian ethnogenesis. The area of what is now Macedonia and Albania was a melting pot of Thracian, Illyrian and Greek cultures in ancient times.

Illyrian origin
The theory that Albanians were related to the Illyrians was proposed for the first time by a German historian in 1774. The scholars who advocate an Illyrian origin are numerous. There are two variants of the theory: one is that the Albanians are the descendants of indigenous Illyrian tribes dwelling in what is now Albania. The other is that the Albanians are the descendants of Illyrian tribes located north of the Jireček Line and probably north or northeast of Albania.

The arguments for the Illyrian-Albanian connection have been as follows:
 * The national name Albania is derived from Albanoi,  an Illyrian tribe mentioned by Ptolemy about 150 A.D.
 * From what we know from the old Balkan populations territories (Greeks, Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians), Albanian language is spoken in the same region where Illyrian was spoken in ancient times.
 * There is no evidence of any major migration into Albanian territory since the records of Illyrian occupation.
 * Many of what remain as attested words to Illyrian have an Albanian explanation and also a number of Illyrian lexical items (toponyms, hydronyms, oronyms, anthroponyms, etc.) have been linked to Albanian.
 * Borrowed words (eg Gk (NW) "device, instrument" mākhaná > *mokër "millstone" Gk (NW) drápanon > *drapër "sickle" etc) from Greek language date back before the Christian era and are mostly of Doric dialect of Greek language, which means that the ancestors of the Albanians were in Northwestern part of Ancient Greek civilization and probably borrowed them from Greek cities (Dyrrachium, Apollonia, etc) in the Illyrian territory, colonies which belonged to the Doric division of Greek, or from the contacts in Epirus area.
 * Borrowed words from Latin (eg Latin aurum > ar "gold", gaudium > gaz "gas" etc ) date back before the Christian era, while Illyrians in the today's Albanian territory were the first from the old Balkan populations to be conquered by Romans in 229 - 167 B.C., Thracians were conquered in 45 A.D. and Dacians in 106 A.D.
 * The ancient Illyrian place-names of the region have achieved their current form following Albanian phonetic rules e.g. Durrachion > Durrës (with the Albanian initial accent) Aulona > Vlonë~Vlorë (with rhotacism) Scodra > Shkodra etc.
 * The characteristics of the Albanian dialects Tosk and Geg in the treatment of the native and loanwords from other languages, have lead to the conclusion that the dialectal split preceded the Slavic migration to the Balkans which means that in that period (5th to 6th century AD) Albanians were occupying pretty much the same area around Shkumbin river which straddled the Jirecek line.

To propagate the connection, the Albanian communist regime adopted a policy of naming people with "Illyrian" names. The reverses of three Albanian coins depict Illyrian motives: an Illyrian helmet in the 50 lekë coin issued in 2003, king Gentius in the 50 lekë coin issued in 1996 and 2000, and queen Teuta in the 100 lekë coin issued in 2000. Gentius is also depicted on the obverse of the 2000 lekë banknote, issued in 2008.

Arguments against Illyrian origin
The theory of an Illyrian origin of the Albanians is challenged on linguistic grounds.


 * The Illyrian tribe of the Albanoi and the town of Albanopolis (mentioned in Ptolemy's Geographia) could be located near Kruja in central Albania, but nothing absolutely proves a connection to the later Albanians, who appear in the historical record in Byzantine documents of the 11th century.
 * By late antiquity, the ethnonym Illyrians was an archaism that had ceased to refer to a distinct Illyrians people (e.g. it was later used by Byzantine historian to refer to the Serbs).
 * The theory of an Illyrian origin for the Albanians is weakened by a lack of any Albanian names before the 12th century and the relative absence of Greek influence that would surely be present if the Albanians inhabited their homeland continuously since ancient times. The number of Greek words borrowed in Albania is small;  if the Albanians originated near modern-day Albania, there should be more.
 * Although some Albanian toponyms descend from Illyrian, according to linguist V. Georgiev, Illyrian toponyms from antiquity have not changed according to the usual phonetic laws applying to the evolution of Albanian. Furthermore, placenames can be a special case and the Albanian language more generally has not been proven to be of Illyrian stock.
 * Many linguists have tried to link Albanian with Illyrian, but without clear results. . There is an argument that Albanian belongs to the so called "satem group" within Indo European, and that Illyrian did not while Dacian did. or Thracian.
 * There is a lack of clear archaeological evidence for a continuous settlement of an Albanian-speaking population since Illyrian times. For example, while Albanians scholars maintain that the Komani-Kruja burial sites support the Illyrian-Albanian continuity theory, most scholars reject this and consider that the remains indicate a population of Romanized Illyrians who spoke a Romance language. Recently, some Albanian archeologists have also been moving away from describing the Komani-Kruja culture as a proto-Albanian culture.

Thracian or Dacian origin
Aside from an Illyrian origin, a Dacian or Thracian origin is also hypothesized. There are a number of factors taken as evidence for a Dacian or Thracian origin of Albanians.

The German linguist Gottfried Schramm (1994) suggests an origin of the Albanians in the Bessoi, a Thracian tribe that was Christianized as early as during the 4th century. Schramm argues that such an early Christianization would explain the otherwise surprising virtual absence of any traces of a pre-Christian pagan religion among the Albanians as they appear in history during the Late Middle Ages. According to this theory, the Bessoi were deported en masse by the Byzantines at the beginning of the 9th century to central Albania for the purpose of fighting against the Bulgarians. In their new homeland, the ancestors of the Albanians took the geographic name Arbanon as their ethnic name and proceeded to assimilate local populations of Slavs, Greeks, and Romans. However even this hypothesis has been contradicted by other scholars

Albanian shares several hundred common words with Eastern Romance, these Eastern Romance words being part of the pre-Roman substrate (see: Eastern Romance substratum) and not loans; Albanian and Eastern Romance also share grammatical features (see Balkan language union) and phonological features, such as the common phonemes or the rhotacism of "n".

According to linguist Vladimir Georgiev, Latin loanwords into Albanian show East Balkan Latin (proto-Romanian) phonetics, rather than West Balkan (Dalmatian) phonetics. Combined with the fact that the Romanian language contains several hundred words similar only to Albanian, Georgiev proposes the Albanian language formed between the 4th and 6th century in or near modern-day Romania, which was Dacian territory. Georgiev suggests that Romanian is a fully Romanised Dacian language, whereas Albanian is only partly so.

Cities whose names follow Albanian phonetic laws - such as Shtip (Štip), Shkupi (Skopje) and Niš - lie in the areas once inhabited by Thracians, Dardani, and Paionians; however, Illyrians also inhabited or may have inhabited these regions, including Naissus.

There are some close correspondences between Thracian and Albanian words. However, as with Illyrian, most Dacian and Thracian words and names have not been closely linked with Albanian (v. Hemp). Also, many Dacian and Thracian placenames were made out of joined names (such as Dacian Sucidava or Thracian Bessapara; see List of Dacian cities and List of ancient Thracian cities), while the modern Albanian language does not allow this.

There are no records that indicate a major migration of Dacians into present day Albania but two Dacian cities existed Thermidava close to Scodra and Quemedava in Dardania.Also, Thracian tribes such as the Bryges were present in Albania near Durrës since before the Roman conquest (v. Hemp). An argument against a Thracian origin (which does not apply to Dacian) is that most Thracian territory was on the Greek half of the Jirecek Line, aside from varied Thracian populations stretching from Thrace into Albania, passing through Paionia and Dardania and up into Moesia; it is considered that most Thracians were Hellenized in Thrace (v. Hoddinott) and Macedonia.

Apart from the linguistic theory that Albanian is more akin to eastern Romance (i.e. Dacian substrate) than western Roman (with Illyrian substrate- such as Dalmatian), Georgiev also notes that marine words in Albanian are borrowed from other languages, suggesting that Albanians were not originally a coastal people (as the Illyrians were). The scarcity of Greek loan words also supports a Dacian theory - if Albanians originated in the region of Illyria there would surely be a heavy Greek influence.

The Dacian theory could also be consistent with the known patterns of barbarian incursions. Although there is no documentation of an Albanian migration (in fact there is no documentation of Albanians per se until the 11th century) the Morava valley region adjacent to Dacia was most heavily affected by migrations of Goths and Slavs, and was moreover a natural invasion route. Thus it would have been a region whose indigenous population would naturally have fled, for example, to the relative safety of mountainous northern Albania.

Language classification
The Albanian language forms its own branch of the Indo-European family and is not closely related to any other Indo-European languages. This complicates attempts to trace the origin of the Albanians further. A study published in Nature in 2003 tentatively put Albanian in the Indo-Iranian branch, but with a high degree of uncertainty.

Genetic studies
Different genetic studies has been made on European population some of them including current Albanian population, Albanian speaking populations outside of Albania, and the Balkan region as a whole.

One of the first studies was that of Belledi et al. (2000) where they suggested that the Albanians share the same ancestry as most other European peoples.

Looking at more recent studies specifically about Y chromosomal lineages, several of the most common lineages in the Balkans vary considerably between the Albanian region and other neighbouring regions. The two haplogroups most strongly associated with the Albanian area are often considered to have arrived in Europe from the Near East with the Neolithic revolution or late Mesolithic, early in the Holocene epoch. From here in the Balkans, it is thought, they spread to the rest of Europe.




 * Y haplogroup E1b1b (E-M35) in the modern Balkan population is dominated by its sub-clade E1b1b1a (E-M78) and specifically by the most common European sub-clade of E-M78, E-V13. The area in and around Albanian speaking regions has the highest known percentages E-V13 in the world, and it is thought that the majority of E-V13 in Europe and elsewhere descend from a common ancestor who lived in the Balkans in the late Mesolithic or Neolithic, and that men of this lineage began to spread outside the Balkans as early as the Neolithic, or even as recently as the Roman era.


 * Y haplogroup J in the modern Balkans is mainly represented by the sub-clade J2b (also known as J-M12 or J-M102 for example). Like E-V13, this clade is spread throughout Europe with a seeming centre and origin near to Albania.

Common in the Balkans but not specifically associated with Albania and the Albanian language are I-M423 and R1a-M17:


 * Y haplogroup I is only found in Europe, and may have been there since before the LGM. Several of its sub-clades are found in significant amounts in the Balkans. The specific I sub-clade which has attracted most discussion in Balkan studies currently referred to as I2a2, defined by SNP M423 This clade has higher frequencies to the north of the Albanophone area, in Dalmatia and Bosnia.


 * Haplogroup R1a is common in Central and Eastern Europe (and is also common in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent). In the Balkans, it is strongly associated with Slavic areas.

The other most common Y haplogroup in the Balkans has strong associations with many parts of Europe:


 * Haplogroup R1b is common all over Europe but especially common on the western Atlantic coast of Europe, and is also found in the Middle East and some parts of Africa. In Europe including the Balkans, it tends to be less common in Slavic speaking areas, where R1a is often the most common haplogroup. It shows similar frequencies of around 20% amongst Albanians and Greeks at around 20% of the male population, but is much less common in Serbia and Bosnia.

Another study regarding old Balkan populations and their genetic affinities with current European populations has been carried out in 2004, based upon mitochondrial DNA on the skeletal remains of some old Thracian populations from SE of Romania, dating from the Bronze and Iron Age. This study was during excavations some human fossil bones of 20 individuals dating about 3200-4100 years, from the Bronze Age, belonging to some cultures such as Tei, Monteoru and Noua were found in graves from some necropoles in SE of Romania, namely in Zimnicea, Smeeni, Candesti, Cioinagi-Balintesti, Gradistea-Coslogeni and Sultana-Malu Rosu and the human fossil bones and teeth of 27 individuals from the early Iron Age, dating from the 10th -7th century B.C. from the Hallstatt Era (the Babadag Culture), were found extremely SE of Romania near the Black Sea coast, in some settlements from Dobrogea, namely: Jurilovca, Satu Nou, Babadag, Niculitel and Enisala-Palanca. After comparing this material with the present-day European population the authors concluded: Computing the frequency of common point mutations of the present-day European population with the Thracian population has resulted that the Italian (7.9 %), the Albanian (6.3 %) and the Greek (5.8 %) have shown a bias of closer genetic kinship with the Thracian individuals than the Romanian and Bulgarian individuals (only 4.2%).

Caucasian theory
One of the earliest theories on the origins of the Albanians identified the proto-Albanians with an area of the Caucasus referred to by classical geographers as "Albania", which roughly corresponds with modern-day Azerbaijan. This theory supposed that the ancestors of the Albanians migrated westward to the Balkans in the late classical or early Medieval period. The Caucasian theory was first proposed by Renaissance humanists who were familiar with the works of classical geographers, and later developed by Francois de Pouqeville. It was made obsolete by the discovery that Albanian is an Indo-European rather than Caucasian language, but still retains currency in Balkan polemics.

Pelasgian theory
Another obsolete theory on the origin of the Albanians is that they descend from the Pelasgians, a generic term used by classical authors to denote the autochthonous inhabitants of Greece. This theory was expounded by the Austrian linguist Johann Georg von Hahn in his work Albanesiche Studien in 1854. According to Hahn, the Pelasgians were the original proto-Albanians and the language spoken by the Pelasgians, Illyrians, Epirotes and ancient Macedonians were closely related. This theory quickly attracted support in Albanian circles, as it established a claim of priority over other Balkan nations, particularly the Greeks. In addition to establishing "historic right" to territory this theory also established that ancient Greek civilization and its achievements had an "Albanian" origin. Although it is nowadays completely rejected by academics, it retains staunch support among Albanian nationalist circles for the above reasons.