History of Albania - Prehistory

Prehistory

The first traces of human presence in Albania were found in the village Xarrë, near Sarandë and Mount Dajt near Tiranë dating to the Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic eras. The objects found in a cave near Xarrë include flint and jasper objects and fossilized animal bones, while those found at Mount Dajt comprise bone and stone tools similar to those of the Aurignacian culture. The Paeolithic finds of Albania show great similarities with objects of the same era found at Crvena Stijena in Montenegro and north-western Greece.

During the Bronze Age, several artifacts from tumulus burials have been unearthed in central and southern Albania, showing close connection with sites in southwestern Macedonia and Lefkada, Greece. Archeologists have come to the conclusion that from the middle of the third millennium BC, these regions were inhabited by Indo-European people who spoke an early form of Greek. A part of them later moved to Mycenae around 1600 BC and founded the Mycenaean civilisation there. On the other hand the Illirii, probably the southernmost Illyrian tribe of that time that lived on the border of Albania and Montenegro, were possibly neighboring with the Greek tribes. In the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age a number of possible population movements occurred, with the Bryges being settled in areas of southern Albania-northwestern Greece and Illyrian tribes moved into central Albania. The later derive from early Indo-European presence in western Balkan Peninsula. Their formation can be assumed to coincide with the beginning Iron Age in the Balkans, during the early 1st millennium BC.

Archaeologists associate the Illyrians with the Hallstatt culture, an Iron Age people noted for production of iron, bronze swords with winged-shaped handles, and domestication of horses. It is impossible to delineate Illyrian tribes from Paleo-Balkans in a strict linguistic sense, but areas classically included under "Illyrian" for the Balkans Iron Age include the area of the Danube, Sava, and Morava rivers to the Adriatic Sea and the Shar Mountains.