Origin of the Albanians

The origin of Albanians has been for some time a matter of dispute among historians. Albanians are people who speak Albanian, an Indo-European language that has no other close living relative, making it dificult to determine from what ancient Balkan language it evolved.

Place of origin

The place where Albanian was formed is also disputed, but by studying the language we can learn that Albanian was formed in a mountainous region rather than plain or seacoast: while the words for plants and animals that are characteristic of the mountainous regions are entirely original, the names for sea-fishes and those for agricultural activities, (such as ploughing) are borrowed from other languages.

We can also be sure that the Albanians didn't live in Dalmatia, because the Latin influence over Albanian is of Balkan Romance (that evolved into Romanian) rather than Dalmatian origin. Adding this to the words common only to Albanian and Romanian, we can assume that the Romanians and Albanians once lived closely. Generally the areas where this might have happened is considered a region varying from Transylvania, Eastern Serbia (region around Naissus/Nis), Kosovo and Northern Albania/Macedonia.

However, Romanian has most agricultural terms of Latin origin, but not terms related to city activities, showing that Romanians, as oposed to Albanians (who were originally shepherds), were agricultural people in the low-plains.

Some scholars even explain the gap between Bulgarian and Serbian languages by 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 Albanians is the relative small number of words of Greek origin, although Southern Illyria was under the influence of Greek/Byzantine civilization and language, especially after the break-down of the Roman Empire.

Ethnic origin

The chief two variants considered by historians are Illyrian and Thracian. Not much is left of the old Illyrian and Thracian tongues, making it even more difficult to match Albanian with either of them.

Some historians claim that neither Illyrian, nor Thracian were homogenous languages, but rather they were collections of dialects or even different languages, that were considered wrongly same language by ancient writers. For example, based on the toponyms, it has been argued that Thracian and Dacian may be different languages. Others thought that Thracian and Illyrian were one language, but due to the lack of evidence, most linguists are skeptical.

Illyrian origin

Arguments for:

(to be written)

Arguments against:

the texts written in Messapian (generally considered an Illyric language) are very different from modern Albanian, indicating that Illyrians appertain to another Indo-European branch.
the Albanians were not mentioned in Byzantine chronicles until 1043, although Illyria was part of the Byzantine Empire.
the Albanian city names mentioned in ancient times that were kept do not follow the Albanian sound change laws, suggesting that they were late borrowing from an intermediary language (most likely Romance or Slavic), rather than inherited (for example ancient Aulona should have been inherited in modern Albanian as Alorë instead of Vlorë).
it is believed that most inhabitants of Illyria were Hellenized (the Southern part) and later Romanized.

Thracian/Dacian origin

Arguments for:

Albanian shares several hundred common words with Romanian, believed to be part of the Dacian substrate (see: List of Dacian words), as well as grammatical and phonological features (see: Balkan language union); Also, the words borrowed from Latin, had their origin in the Proto-Romanian, not Dalmatian.
the phonetics of Dacian language (based largely on toponyms) are close to those of Albanian [1]

Arguments against:

many Dacians and Thracian placenames were made out of joined names (such as "Sucidava" or "Bessapara"), while Albanian language does not allow this.

Pelasgian/Etruscans origin

The Pelasgians are generally considered to be the people living in the Balkans before the Indo-European arrival, the Greek writers mentioning them as autochthonic peoples that predated hellenic settlement. The Etruscans were also indigenous people of Europe, but it is not known whether they were or not related to the Pelasgians.

However, the Communist regime of Albania embraced the ideology that the Albanians were their successors (based on the books of French scholar Zacharia Mayani) and used this for propaganda, discarding the fact proven scientifically that Albanian is an Indo-European language (having known kins would make Albanians less unique).

Mainstream linguists and historians never seriously considered the idea of Albanians having an Etruscan origin, because the proponents of the Etruscan-theory were not using a scientific method, but were using pure linguistic coincidences.

Caucasus origin

In Ancient Times, there was another region called "Albania", in the Caucasus, bordering the Caspian Sea. However, that name was simply a coincidence, "alb" being a common Indo-European word meaning "white" or "mountain" with many toponyms deriving from it, including the Alps and Alba, the Gaelic name of Scotland.

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