Petrit Latifi

“Some Greek words in Albanian show the sound pattern of ancient Greek, an indication that the words were transmitted in an ancient epoch and that the Albanians must have been living in the vicinity of Greece for the past 3 000 years.

Yet the ancestors of the Albanians did not merely inhabit the coastal areas. As attested also by the Halstatt culture, the domain of the Illyrians was vast; it extended to the east and to the north. Some words, still used in a few Swiss dialects, denote an Illyrian origin. Thus, for example, in the Berner Oberland, the cow is still called lobe as in Albanian. Noteworthy also are the Illyrian finds on the left bank of Lake Neuchatel, connected with a culture known as La Tene culture (500 B.C. to 1 A.D.).

However, North Illyria was sparsely populated. The North Illyrian tribes eventually mixed with Celts and other invaders and little by little lost their identity. Only Southern Illyria, more densely peopled, survived. Appian, who wrote in the second century AD, maintained, citing the Greeks, that Illyria at that time stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Danube.

This included the important province Dardania, i.e., the region of Shkup (Skopje), Niš and Priština. Ancient authors (Pliny) used to call the Southern Illyrians “Illyrii proprie dicti”. They were divided into tribes, some of which managed to form small kingdoms. With its capital Scodra (Shkodra, Scutari) and its main seaport Ulqin, Illyria constituted, in the 3rd century B.C., a powerful federal state.

Fanula Papazoglu, professor of ancient history at the University of Belgrade, who has written extensively on the Illyrians (see among others, Les origines et la destinee de l’Etat illyrien – Illyrii proprie dicti, in Historia, Wiesbaden, 14, 1965, Heft 2), has also devoted a long chapter to the Dardanians in her work The Central Balkan Tribes in Pre-Roman Times…(Engl. Transl. from the Serbo-Croatian, Amsterdam, Hakkert, 1978, 664 p.). In this latter work she indicates that:

“Not one of the peoples with whom we have to deal in this book has such a claim to the epithet “Balkan” as the Dardanians… because they appear as the most stable and the most conservative ethnic element in the area where everything was exposed to constant change, and also because they, with their roots in the distant prehomeric age, and living in the frontiers of the Illyrian and the Thracian worlds retained their individuality and, alone among the peoples of that region succeeded in maintaining themselves as an ethnic unity even when they were militarily and politically subjected by the Roman arms…and when at the end of the ancient world, the Balkans were involved in far-reaching ethnic perturbations, the Dardanians, of all the Central Balkan tribes, played the greatest part in the genesis of the new peoples who took the place of the old (p.131).”

The extent of the territory inhabited by the Illyro-Albanians at the time of the arrival of the Slavs is suggested by place name. The well known Albanian linguist, E. Cabej, has remarked in “Die aelteren Wohnsitze der Albaner auf der Balkanhalbinsel im Lichte der Sprache und Ortsnamen” (Atti e memorie del VII Congresso internationale di scienze onomastiche, Firenze-Pisa 1961 I, pp.246-251) and in various other articles that names of small localities change in the course of years (thus many place names in present-day Albania, in Kosova and elsewhere in the Balkans are Slav)   but not so those of cities, mountains and rivers.

Various toponyms prove that at least since Roman times the Albanians have between living as well on the Adriatic and Ionian coasts as in the Western Macedonia – Kosova region, formerly called Dardania, for many geographical names, be they of Illyrian, Ancient Greek, or Roman origin – were transmitted with changes characteristic of Albanian phonetic rules. Such names are, for example, Nish (Naissos), Shkupi (Scupi), Oher,Ochrid (Oricium = Lychnos), Drisht (Drivastum), Shar (Scardus), Shkodra (Scodra), Mati (Amatia), Buna (Barbena), Ulqin (Ulcinium), Lesh (Lissus), Tcham (Thyamis), Ishm (Ismus), Durres (Durachium), Drin (Drillion), Zara (Zadar), Triest (Tregest), Tomor (Tomarus), Shtip (Astibos), Shtiponje (Stoponion).

Tumuli from the Iron Age were found in Mat (north Albania), Dropull (south Albania), Vajze (southeast Albania) and other localities. The archeological finds of these places chow links with the Illyrian necropolia of Glasinac in Bosnia and of Trebnište in Macedonia. This culture, known in archeological literature as Glasinac Culture, is encountered in a region stretching from Epirus to the Drin (Drina) and Morava, comprising Montenegro, Kosova and Bosnia.

Sitnica was the link to Dardania

J.G. von Hahn, who believed in the Illyro-Albanian continuity, had no doubts, when he visited Kosova that the Albanians had been living there since ancient times. He regarded the region of Sitnica as constituting a pure Albanian link between Dardania and Albania.6

Among the numerous publications, one may mention:
a) Les Illyriens et la genese des Albanais, Tirana 1972.
b) Actes du Congres des Etudes Illyrienns (two volumes), 1974.

References

https://phdn.org/archives/www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/Kosovo/juka2.htm