by Marios Dimopoulos

Xerxes Livas, in his book awarded by the Greek Anthropological Society entitled “Aegeis, the Cradle of the Indo-Europeans and Hellenism,” writes: “The few Slavic mountain guards on the Danube are the only Slavic racial quantity in the Balkans. The Serbs numbered 100 to 200 families at most.” He also writes: “Several indications provided by Porphyrogenitus also converge towards this estimate regarding the small number of the Slavic (Serbian) core in the Balkans.

However, it is manifest that such palindromic movements over such long distances, without even a serious reason, were impossible to be carried out by a populous nation and that it concerned a certain number, 100 or 200 families at most.” Regarding the Albanians, Xerxes Livas writes: “For the Albanians, it can be said that there is no issue from the perspective posed, because they are confessedly indigenous to the Balkans and consequently belong to the general Pelasgian stock.”

I am also publishing scanned images of the book’s cover and the relevant excerpts from the book in my post, so that no one can claim he did not actually write what I quoted above. It is interesting to see how older scholars interpreted the demographic and ethnological history of the Balkans.

History becomes much more interesting when we actually read what the historical authors themselves wrote. Sometimes the most provocative thing you can do is simply quote a book.

These observations of the old Greek scholar are largely confirmed by modern genetic studies as well. The modern genome of the Serbs is indeed the result of complex admixture between the 6th-7th century Slavic migrants and the indigenous Paleo-Balkan populations.

1. Percentage of indigenous ancestry: A multi-year study by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) showed that about half of the genome of today’s Serbs is indigenous, at least up to the Bronze Age. Specifically on the official website of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (sanu . ac . rs . Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts) in their article entitled “Lecture on Slavic Migrations and the Origin of People in the Balkans”, the following is stated:

“‘Slavic Migrations and Genomic Origin of the Balkan People’ is the title of the lecture to be delivered by Professor Carles Lalueza-Fox at the SASA Grand Hall, on Tuesday, 28 June, at noon. A several-year-long study on the origin of the Balkan people has revealed that about a half of today’s Serbian population’s genomes is indigenous, at least up to the Bronze age, whereas the remaining half is of Slavic origin, descendant from the Slavic migrants in the 7th century. Therefore, Slavic migration to the Balkans did not bring about population replacement, but an admixture of indigenous Balkan genome and the genome of Slavic migrants.”

2. Other sources mention that the Slavic percentage ranges between 50-60% and the rest originates from Paleo-Balkan populations and other migrations. [Article from the website slobodenpecat . mk . titled “Research: Serbs have 50 percent Slavic origin, and the rest is the genetics of the Old Balkan population”, where it writes:

“These results titled ‘The genomic history of the Balkans from the Roman border to the Slavic migrations’ were published in the prestigious journal ‘Cell’. Using the latest genomic technologies and researching the ancient DNA of the Balkans, a team of researchers from Serbia, Spain, and the United States proved the continuity of the genes of present-day Serbian and ancient Balkan populations since the Bronze Age.

The research was initiated by researchers from the Faculty of Biology in Belgrade, Professors Miodrag Grbić, Željko Tomanović, corresponding member of SANU and Professor Dušan Keckarević, as well as researchers from the Archaeological Institute Ilija Mikić, Miomir Korać and Snežana Golubović, in collaboration with the University of Barcelona and Harvard.]

3. Composition of paternal haplogroups: The majority of Serbian men belong to three main haplogroups:

• I-M258 (38%): Haplogroup I2a is the most frequent and is strongly linked to the South Slavs and pre-Slavic Balkan populations.

• R1a1a-M198 (20%): Linked to Slavic and Eastern European migrations.

• E1b1b1-M35 (18%): Common haplogroup in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. [Source: Hussain, Zahid (Researcher) of Government College University (Lahore), The Genetic Origins of the Serbian People: An Integrative Population Genomics Perspective]

4. Diversity of maternal lineages (mtDNA): Mitochondrial DNA studies show exceptional diversity linked to the impact of indigenous pre-Slavic populations.

5. The most dominant Y-chromosome haplogroup in Serbia is I2-PH908, which is found in over 60-70% of individuals in some studies, often interpreted as a strong Paleo-Balkan/Illyrian contribution absorbed by the incoming Slavic population.

6. Modern genetic studies are largely in agreement with my presentation at the 21st Congress of the European Anthropological Association in Denmark (August 22-25, 2018) titled “An anthropological overview of the Balkanian populations”, where I cited the published literature up to that point and argued that the Slavic-speaking inhabitants of the Balkans are largely not of Slavic but of pre-Slavic origin, essentially ancient indigenous populations.

Conclusion

Serbs are largely of Albanian (Illyrian/Dardanian) origin. They are linguistically Slavicized Albanians. Albanians lived in Albania and Kosovo thousands of years before the Slavs came to the Balkans. The first Serbs were only 100 or 200 families, so Serbs cannot claim that Kosovo was Serbian. Kosovo (ancient Dardania) was and is Albanian.

Authored by Marios Dimopoulos, Philologist, Linguist, Ethnologist, Author, Researcher and Speaker at International Academic Conferences