Origin of The Albanians - Place of Origin

Place of Origin

The Albanian language is attested in a written form only in the 15th century AD, when the Albanian ethnos was already formed. In the absence of prior data on the language, scholars have used the Latin and Slav loans into Albanian for identifying its location 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 are generally assumed to have been borrowed from other languages. The Slav loans in Albanian suggest that contacts between two populations took place when Albanian dwelt in forests 600–900 metres above sea level. The overwhelming number of mountaineering and shepherding vocabulary, coupled with the extensive influence of Latin makes it likely that the Albanians originated north of the Jireček Line, further north and inland than the current borders of Albania suggest.

It has long been recognized that there are two treatments of Latin loans in Albanian, of Old Dalmatian type and Romanian type, but that would point out to two geographic layers, coastal Adriatic and inner Balkan region. Some scholars believe that the Latin influence over Albanian is of Eastern Romance origin, rather than of Dalmatian origin, which would exclude Dalmatia as a place of origin. Adding to this the several hundred words in Romanian that are cognate only with Albanian cognates (see Eastern Romance substratum), these scholars assume that Romanians and Albanians lived in close proximity at one time. The areas where this might have happened is the Morava valley in eastern Serbia.

Another argument in favor of a northern origin for the Albanian language is the relatively small number of words of Greek origin, mostly from Doric dialect, even though Southern Illyria neighbored the Classical Greek civilization and there was a number of Greek colonies along the Illyrian coastline.

Those scholars who maintain the Illyrian origin of Albanians maintain that the indigenous Illyrian tribes dwelling in South Illyria went up in mountains when Slavs occupied the lowlands. while another version of this hypothesis maintains that the Albanians are the descendants of Illyrian tribes located between Dalmatia and Danube, which spilled south.

The scholars who support a Dacian origin of Albanians maintain that between third and sixth centuries AD Albanians moved from Moesian area to south, while those scholars who maintain a Thracian origin hypothesize that the proto-Albanians are to be located in Thracian territory in the area between Niš, Skopje, Sofia and Albania or from the Rhodope and Balkan mountains, where they moved to Albania before the arrival of the Slavs.