I see a lot of people here claiming this, or that Albanian comes from Thracian or Pelasgian. Is somebody able to provide evidence of this? ....
Encyclopedia Britannica
Page 483
The Albanians are apparently the most ancient race in southeastern Europe. History and legend afford no record of their arrival in the Balkan Peninsula.
They are probably the descendants of the earliest Aryan, immigrants, who were represented in historical times by the kindred Ilryrians, Macedonians and Epirots;
the Macedonians and Epirots are believed by Hahn to have formed the core of the pro-Hellenic Tyrrheno-Pelasgian population which inhabited the southern portion of the peninsula and extended its limits to Thrace and Italy.
The Illyrians were also ” Pelasgian,” but in a wider sense. Of these cognate races, which are described by the Greek writers as barbarous or non-Hellenic, the Illyrians and Epirots, he thinks, were respectively the progenitors of the CÍegt, or northern, and the Tasks, or southern, Albanians.
The Via Egnatia, which Strain)(vii. fragment 3) describes as forming the boundary between the Illyrians and Epirots, practically corresponds with the course of the Shkumb, which now separates the Ghegs and the Tosks.
The same geographer (v. 2.221) states that the Epirots were also called Pelasgians; the Pelasgian Zeus was worshipped at Dodona (Homer, II. xvi. 234), and the neighbourhood of the sanctuary was called Pelasgia (Herodotus ii. 56).
The meaning of the term ” Pelasgian ” is, however, too obscure to furnish, a basis for ethnographical speculation; in the time of Herodotus it may have already come to denote a period rather than a race. The name Tost is possibly identical with ’1′im.tts, Elruscus, while the form Tyrrkenus perhaps survives in Tirana.
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Culture worlds
By Richard Joël Russell, Fred Bowerman Kniffen
Science – 1951 – 620 pages
Page 202
Thraco-Illyrian was one of the earliest Indo- European languages in Europe. It
survives only in Albanian.
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One Europe, many nations: a historical dictionary of European national groups
By James Minahan
History – 2000 – 781 pages
Page 29
The Albanian language forms the only surviving dialect of the Thraco-Illyrian branch of the Indo-European languages.
Seems to validate the Albanian claim to be the Balkan peninsula’s original inhabitants.
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World history
By Hutton Webster
Page 530
No other part of Europe of equal extent contains so many different peoples as the Balkan Peninsula.
The original inhabitants are represented to-day by the Albanians
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Embassy of the Czech Republic in Tirana
The Albanian Language A more concrete evidence of the Illyrian-Pelasgian origin of the Albanians is supplied by the study of the Albanian language.
Notwithstanding certain points of resemblance in structure and phonetics, the Albanian language is entirely distinct from the tongues spoken by the neighboring natonalities.
This language is particularly interesting as the only surviving representative of the so-called Thraco-Illyrian group of languages, which formed the primitive speech of the inha
A more concrete evidence of the Illyrian-Pelasgian origin of the Albanians is supplied by the study of the Albanian language. Notwithstanding certain points of resemblance in structure and phonetics, the Albanian language is entirely distinct from the tongues spoken by the neighboring natonalities.
This language is particularly interesting as the only surviving representative of the so-called Thraco-Illyrian group of languages, which formed the primitive speech of the inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula.
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WHO WERE THE ILLYRIANS
Albanian is the only Indo European language that has preserved the archaic structure of proto Aryan language. Albanian adjectives and ordinals come after the stressed nouns.
The law formulated in 1892 by J. Wackernagel, according to which unstressed parts of the sentence tend to occupy a position after the first stressed word normally situated at the beginning of a sentence qualifies Albanian as the oldest living Indo European language.
web.archive.org/web/20071106105423/www.geocities.com/protoillyrian/
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The Journal of race development, Volume 2
By Clark University
(Worcester, Mass.) History – 1912
Page 56
The formation of the skull and other distinct racial characteristics indicate an approximately pure ancestry and certainly one of great antiquity.
The concensus of scholarly opinion is that the Albanians were derived from the ancient Pelasgan race, the oldest race of Europe.
Thus the Albanians can justly claim to be one of the oldest and purest races in Europe; and this is further attested by the fact that they are a most virile people.
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Albania, the foundling state of Europe
Wadham Peacock – History – 1914 – 256 pages
Page 197
The Shqipetars have not only preserved their mountain homes but also their language and their laws. Albanian, to give it the modern name, is a very ancient Aryan tongue which was spoken by the Balkan tribes before the time of Alexander the Great.
Page 182
The more than a thousand years’ struggle of the Shqipetars against the Slav and the Turk has always been passed over as an incident of no importance.
Page 205
The Albanian comes of the oldest race in Europe, he is the descendant of the original owners of the soil, and to him the Slav, just as much as the Turk, is an intruder and a supplanter
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Metta Spencer – Political Science – 2000 – 378 pages
The Albanian language, though indo-European, is entirely distinct from the tongues spoken elsewhere in the region,
and is the only surviving representative of the so-called Thraco-Illyrian group of languages, which was spoken by the inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula before the Roman period
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Hutton Webster – History – 1921 – 755 pages
No other part of Europe of equal extent contains so many different peoples as the Balkan Peninsula. The original inhabitants are represented to-day by the Albanians
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The wars of the Balkan Peninsula: their medieval origins
By Alexandru Madgearu, Martin Gordon
Page 171
Croatian Historian Dr. ALEKSANDER STIPCEVIC
Remarks that:
In fact, the theory of Albanian autochthony has never been disputed with such determination and savagery as today, precisely when so much scientific proof has been produced in its support.
Nevertheless, the number of researchers still today refusing to take into consideration the many arguments supplied by different academic disciplines has shrunk, or, more accurately, absolutely the only researchers who deny the theory of Albanian autochthony are Serbian.
Serbian archaeologists and historians began long ago to dispute the autochthony theory, but this opposition increased especially after the great Albanian revolt in Kosova in 1981. It was therefore a consequence of a political event rather than of new scientific data.
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Harvard Classics, Volume 28
By Charles W. Eliot – 2008 – 504 pages
Page 285
They are a true and living nation, a nation whose importance to the matter in hand is quite out of its proportion to its extent in mere numbers.
In near neighborhood to the Greeks still live another race of equal antiquity, the Shqipetar or Albanians.
These, as I believe is no longer doubted, represent the ancient Illyrians.
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Leavening the Levant
By Joseph K. Greene Religion – 1916 – 353 pages
Page 25-27
THE ALBANIANS
The Albanians are an Aryan race, first known as Pelasgians, but called Illyrians by the Romans.
With 25,000 Albanian soldiers Alexander the Great conquered Asia. Their country lies along the shore of the Adriatic Sea, with Montenegro on the north, Greece on the south and Macedonia on the east.
It is a very mountainous country, divided in the center by the river Shkumbi, which empties into the Adriatic. The people north of this river are known as Ghegs though they call themselves Shqipetar and those south of the river are known as Tosks.
From the earliest times they have been divided into clans, each loyal to its chief. They resent any injury done to any member of the clan, and blood feuds (vendetta) are common.
Like the Highlanders of Scotland they wear a kilt and an embroidered jacket. They arc a handsome race, independent and brave, and the men always go armed.
They greatly love their mountains and are intensely patriotic. Their women do much outdoor work, but are treated with respect. With some variety of dialect, their language is one, and their customs are one.
After the Balkan war (1912-13) nearly half of Albania was occupied by the Greeks, the Servians and the Montenegrins, and had it not been for the intervention of the European Powers, all their lands would have been seized by the hostile states surrounding them.
As an independent Aryan people, neither Slav nor Greek, the Great Powers determined to recognize the Albanians as an independent state.
They appointed a commission to organize the government and recognized Prince William of Wied as their ruler.
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HISTORIA E AUSTRISE;
THE HISTORY OF AUSTRIA
Illyrians, people of Indo-European stock who are considered ancestors of modern Albanians, settled on the northern and eastern coasts of the Adriatic Sea.
Included among them were the Dalmatians and the Pannonians. Eventually, the ancient region of Illyria would include the western part of the Balkan Peninsula from the Danube River to Epirus.
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The Albanians: an ethnic history from prehistoric times to the present
By Edwin E. Jacques
Page XIV
People ask more specifically, where did Albanians originate? So first we shall examine archaeological findings, then the highly sophisticated detective work of linguistic experts, and finally the popular traditions preserved in the earliest chronicles of ancient scholars.
Here we discover trace of Albanian‘s otherwise incomprehensible pre-historic culture. This ancient Pelasgian people antedated the developing civilizations of Greece and Rome .
Their determination to preserve their ethnic identity, their passion of their own land, language and liberty were threatened by both the eastern and western empires of Christendom, and later by the ottoman Turks.
Page xiii
Serious scholars claim Albanian ethnicity for the poet Homer, the philosopher Aristotle, and Hippocrates, the father of Medicine. Jerome, who translated the Latin vulgate bible, was of Illyrian, or Albanian, descent, as was Pope clement XI.
So was Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I, who in 1964 met Pope Paul VI to release one another from the anathemas of 1054, which split the eastern Catholic church from the West.
An astonishing number of Albanian were promoted to the highest governmental offices of the Ottoman empire the Italian Francesco Crispi declared himself of Albanian blood.
So was Mohammed Ali Pasha. Who in 1805 established the beneficent century-long regime in Egypt . And so was Mustapha Kemal, founder of modern turkey, and called “Ata-Turk”
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Archeology is the historical science
Page 2
books.google.com/books…
Page 34
The British philologist Joseph Swire. In his book Albania: the rise of a kingdom, published in 1929 was based on his five years of serious research in Albania and elsewhere.
Swire concluded that the Albanian race is descended from the earliest Aryan immigrants and was represented in historical times by the Thraco-Illyrians and Epirotes or Pelasgians who originally inhabited the whole of the Balkan Peninsula between the Danube and the Aegean.
He pointed out that the earliest Greek writers described the Epirotes as non-Hellenic and that the inhabitants of Macedonia, Illyria and Epirotes spoke the same language and had similar customs (Swire 1929, 4)
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The Albanians: an ethnic history from prehistoric times to the present By Edwin E. Jacques
Page XIV
People ask more specifically, where did Albanians originate?
So first we shall examine archaeological findings, then the highly sophisticated detective work of linguistic experts, and finally the popular traditions preserved in the earliest chronicles of ancient scholars.
Here we discover trace of Albanian‘s otherwise incomprehensible pre-historic culture.
This ancient Pelasgian people antedated the developing civilizations of Greece and Rome .
Their determination to preserve their ethnic identity,
their passion of their own land, language and liberty were threatened by both the eastern and western empires of Christendom, and later by the ottoman Turks.
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The Encyclopedia Americana: a library of universal knowledge, Volume 3
Reference – 1918
Page 85
The Albanians of Illyrian stock are the most ancient historic races of the Balkans.
The Slavs are latecomers by migration and conquest.
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Albania, the foundling state of Europe
Wadham Peacock – History – 1914 – 256 pages
Page 197
The Shqipetars have not only preserved their mountain homes but also their language and their laws. Albanian, to give it the modern name, is a very ancient Aryan tongue which was spoken by the Balkan tribes before the time of Alexander the Great.
Page 182
The more than a thousand years’ struggle of the Shqipetars against the Slav and the Turk has always been passed over as an incident of no importance.
Page 205
The Albanian comes of the oldest race in Europe, he is the descendant of the original owners of the soil, and to him the Slav, just as much as the Turk, is an intruder and a supplanter
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The Balkans: a laboratory of history
William Milligan Sloane – History – 1914 – 322 pages
Page 40
Albania at first sight it seems very curious that the national costume of modern Greece was adopted or adapted from that of a stock not Greek at all,
a little folk the most remarkable of the European continent, namely, the Albanians, a people, as far as we know, absolutely without any close, or at least calculable, affinity with any other, whether of race, speech, or institutions;
still using the oldest known European language;
retaining, without unity of religion, habitat or manners, a unity of nature, appearance, and character which sets them absolutely apart from the surrounding populations, with whom they mingle freely but do not coalesce.
The explanation is that in a high sense they are the makers of modern Greece.
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Greece and the Greeks, tr.[from Lifvet i gamla verden] by M. Howitt
by Fredrika Bremer 1863
Page 294
Nearly the whole population of Eleusis is Albanian, and speaks the Albanian tongue—a language altogether different from Greek, and which is asserted by many to be a descendant of the most ancient Pelasgian tongue.
It is still the popular language of Albania (Epirus), the country in which the Pelasgian Zeus was worshipped.
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Studi critici, Volume 2
Critical Studies, Volume 2
By Graziadio Isaia Ascoli – Comparative linguistics – 1877
Page 63
della lingua, come quelle della storia, delle tradizioni e dei costumi, provano che gli Albanesi sieno i diretti discendenti degli Illirio-Macedoni e degli Epiroti dell’antichità, rendendo perciò ancora assai probabile l’opinione di chi fa degli Albanesi i continuatori dei Pelasgi, i Neo-Pelasgi, cosi come NeoElleni si direbbero i Greci moderni
Translate in English
Language, such as history, traditions and morals, show that the Albanians are the owners direct descendants of the Illyrians, Macedonians and Epirote antiquity,
The Albanians are the continuity of the ancient pelasgians, the Neo-Pelasgians, as NeoHellenic as well you would say the modern Greeks