Transcribed, translated and edited by Petrit Latifi

Summary

A recent study published in Nature Human Behavior, analyzed in this video, uses advanced ancient DNA technology to explore the origins of Albanians. The research suggests a strong genetic continuity between modern Albanians and Paleobalkan populations dating back to the Bronze Age, indicating that approximately 70% of Albanian ancestry is linked to ancient Balkan populations, particularly from the central and western regions.

The study also identifies around 15% of ancestry from migrations originating in Anatolia during the Roman period, and another 15% from Central and Eastern European migrations, including Slavic influences. This genetic data implies that the majority of Albanian ancestry has been present in the Balkans for 3,000 to 4,000 years. While the study doesn’t definitively label Albanians as solely Illyrian, it acknowledges that Illyrians likely contributed significantly to this Balkan genetic component.

The research highlights the importance of multidisciplinary and international collaboration, with a notable inclusion of Albanian researchers. Future studies aim to fill gaps in the data, particularly from the Iron Age and Roman periods in Kosovo and Albania, to further refine our understanding of Albanian ethnogensis, which is estimated to have begun around the 1st or 2nd century CE. The study concludes that Albanians carry a unique and significant genetic legacy from ancient central and western Balkan peoples, emphasizing a long human continuity in the region shaped by millennia of migration, mixing, and adaptation.

Ancient DNA as a Historical Tool

The study leverages advanced ancient DNA (aDNA) technology and statistical methods to reconstruct population movements, admixtures, and genetic continuity over thousands of years, providing a new layer of evidence for historical debates about origins.

Genetic Continuity vs. Replacement

The research highlights a significant genetic continuity between ancient Balkan populations (dating back to the Bronze Age) and modern Albanians, suggesting that while migrations and admixtures occurred, they did not lead to a complete replacement of the original population base.

Etnogenesis as a Process

The formation of the Albanian ethnicity (ethnogenesis) is presented not as a single event but as a gradual process, likely beginning around the 1st-2nd century CE, influenced by various ancestral components and demographic shifts over centuries.

Breakthrough Ideas

Quantifying Ancestry Components: For the first time, the study provides quantitative estimates of ancestral contributions, suggesting approximately 70% of Albanian ancestry is linked to ancient Balkan peoples, with around 15% from Anatolia/East and 15% from Central/Eastern Europe (including Slavic influences).

Dating Etnogenesis with Genetics

Genetic data offers a new way to date the formation of the Albanian ethnicity, suggesting it began around the 1st-2nd century CE, coinciding with Roman rule and the arrival of Eastern ancestry, and predating significant Slavic migrations.

Surprising Proximity to Early Medieval Samples

A particularly surprising finding is the pronounced genetic similarity between modern Albanians and individuals from the early Middle Ages, indicating a remarkable genetic stability over approximately 1200 years.

Key Connections

Genetics, Linguistics, and History

The study connects genetic findings with historical and linguistic evidence, noting that Albanians speak a language that appears to have survived from ancient times, a phenomenon of interest when considering genetic continuity.

Regional Genetic Variation within Albania

The research was able to analyze genetic profiles across different regions of Albania (North, South, etc.), revealing that the Eastern ancestral component (~15%) is relatively constant across all regions, suggesting a shared historical event influencing the entire population.

Illyrian Legacy and Broader Balkan Ancestry

While the Illyrians are acknowledged to have left a strong genetic legacy, the study indicates that the ~70% of Balkan ancestry likely includes Illyrians and other ancient tribes from the Central and Western Balkan regions, requiring further investigation to pinpoint specific contributions.

Practical Applications

Challenging Simplistic Narratives

The study provides a scientific basis to challenge narratives that portray Albanians as latecomers to the Balkans, demonstrating a deep and continuous genetic presence dating back millennia.

Framework for Future Research: The findings establish a framework and backbone for future studies on Albanian origins, highlighting the need for more ancient DNA samples from specific periods (Iron Age, Roman, early Middle Ages) and regions (Kosovo, North Macedonia) to fill remaining gaps.

Understanding Population Dynamics

The research illustrates how population genetics can illuminate complex historical processes like migration, admixture, and long-term continuity, offering a more nuanced understanding of how modern populations were formed.

Introduction

For centuries, the origin of the Albanians has been one of the greatest historical debates in the Balkans. From ancient chronicles, to medieval documents, from archaeology to linguistics. Various researchers have tried to answer the question of who the Albanians are and how ancient their roots are in this space. But today, modern science has also entered this debate.

Ancient DNA is opening a new chapter in the study of human history. A study published in the prestigious journal Nature Human Behavior has attracted the attention of public opinion and the academic world, as it suggests a strong genetic continuity of Albanians with Paleo-Balkan populations from the Bronze Age to the present day. Is this the strongest scientific evidence to date for the continuity of Albanians in the Balkans?

What can DNA show about the history of a people and are Albanians a special case in ancient DNA studies? Balans many languages ​​tribes andally linguistic diversity homogenized considerably and from this older layer of linguistic history only two languages ​​survived the Albanian language and the Greek but is very interesting is that Albanian century and then many historians anthropologists and linguists to understand where did the Albanian people emerge from which part of the Balans they came from and triggered many debates many he debates DNA mocular and have experiencient DNA team this is the best time that we can use the best tools of ancient DNA to try to resolve the enigma century resolved enigma where the Albanians come from people and DNA perhaps about history language.

For the analysis advanced statistical methods and modern technology of ancient DNA were used, comparing thousands of genetic samples from the Bronze Age, Antiquity and the Middle Ages with modern Balkan populations. These methods enabled researchers to reconstruct movements, mixtures and continuity of populations over thousands of years.

Modern techniques in population genetics. employ techniques that entially try to model the ancestry of a particular population using other source populations and this allowed us to infer the different peoples that contributed to the ancestry of present day Albanians and of course people who lived in Albania in the past but of course all models can never be 100% reliable so we DNA inherited inalical time deeper time relations people as many tools as could to entangle the ancestry of present day Albanians and ancient inhabitants of the country.

What distinguishes this study from previous analyses of the origin of Albanians? Can it be said that for the first time we have such a broad base of ancient DNA to follow the continuity of populations in the Balkans from the Bronze Age to the Albanians of today. In fact, there have been studies before that were not specific to Albanians, but there have been studies that have also addressed the Balkans and in a slightly peripheral way we can also say the origin of Albanians.

Well, but in this case there are some differences, some innovations. Initially, it is the journal where the article was published, it was published that is part of the Nature network, it is the Nature magazine, among the most prestigious journals in the world in the natural sciences. And, another innovation was the number of samples.

Well, we actually collected 74 samples from today’s Albanians, 74 samples from 74 Albanians with all four grandparents from the same regional or provincial sub-dialect. So this enabled us to do an analysis for Albanians as a whole when 74 samples for a population the size of the Albanian people is a very, very high-quality sample and there are 74 results of maximum quality whole gene sequencing and in addition to this let us see the sub-structures in the genetic profile of the north, the south, the different sub-provinces. This was something that had never been achieved until now.

Uh, I must say another innovation that we are used to seeing studies about Albanians not in genetics, but in every field which are done by foreigners, various world academies, Western universities in general German, Austrian, American and others and others. It is among the rare cases, let alone the first time when an important part of the authorial team is also a group of Albanian authors and this normally has its own importance for the focus of scientific research on our history and not only for some points where the history of Albanians can be intertwined with that part of history that interests people and Western audiences.

The study has received a lot of public attention because in many media and debates it was interpreted as proof of the autochthonousness of Albanians in the Balkans. This comes from the fact that the results show a visible genetic continuity between the ancient populations of the Bronze Age and the modern Albanian population. However, in the scientific sense the term autochthonous is not used in an absolute or political way. So the study does not say that Albanians have not been influenced by other migrations, but that their main genetic basis is strongly related to the early indigenous populations of the Balkans.

The word autochthonous depends on how you define it. Well, instead of using one word or another, we can say in percentages and we can talk in exact numbers and we can say that approximately 70% of the Albanian ancestry is related to the ancient peoples of the Balkans, especially the central and western Balkans. About 15% is related to movements from the east. especially the Anatolian area in the Roman period and another 15% is related to the arrival from Central and Eastern Europe, which here is mainly the Slavic two.

So the vast majority of our ancestry has continuity in the Balkans for three to four thousand years or a little more. Since according to the study it turns out that the vast majority of Albanian ancestry has a continuity in the Balkans for more than 3000 4000 years, the question naturally arises whether this continuity is automatically linked to the Illyrians.

There is no doubt that the Illyrians have left a strong genetic legacy to today’s Albanians. Uh, but when I say 70% of our ancestry is linked to the ancient tribes of the Balkans, here we can talk, it is definitely the Illyrian part, there may also be other tribes from the Central and Western Balkans. And this is something that we need to research a little deeper.

It seems that the trend is towards the Western Balkans more than the Eastern one so far, but it is not a completely safe conclusion with these data. We also need new data, especially from the remains of the Iron Age, the Roman period and perhaps even the early Middle Ages.

These are the key periods, since the Bronze and Iron Ages are more or less connected to the Middle Ages, but it remains to fill the gap in between and learn more specifically which specific area contributed to this 70% that is pre-Roman in the Balkans. So there are other populations in western Europe for example that display bronze age or iron age continuity but frequently the identity of the people and the language may be completely different from what it was in the past so for us what is very interesting is that the Albanians speak a language that ends from.

What was discovered about the arrival of Indo-Europeans in Albania and how is this reflected in ancient DNA? Does the study suggest that this event occurred in the Bronze Age through a process of migration and mixing with the native populations of the Balkans and not as a complete replacement of the existing population.

Europe present day languages ​​belong to one family of languages, the Indeuropean languages ​​that spread a few thousand years ago from what is now southern Russia and Eastern Ukraine all across Europe and they spread the Indeuropean languages. However, in many parts of Europe, we do not know exactly when these language groups arrived. And what we did is that we found a previously published sample that was thought to have come from the steps from the steps of Ukraine at some point but nobody could precisely date when this person arrived.

And we used an innovative new technique called dates which allowed us to date the arrival of this person his ancestors to around 2600 BCE. And this gives us a snapshot as to when Indo European languages ​​may have arrived into the Bals. Albania specifically do not know what language that was based on this person genetics strongly suspect would speak the language of Indo European.

The closeness of today’s Albanians to the samples of the Bronze Age and the early Middle Ages shows a high level of genetic continuity in the Western Balkans. According to the results of the study, the modern Albanian population shows a noticeable similarity with Bronze Age individuals from the region, which suggests that a large part of their genetic heritage is related to the early indigenous population of this area. Also, the samples of the early Middle Ages from the Albanian territory are now very close to today’s Albanians.

Well, then the closeness with the samples of the early Middle Ages is a surprise of this article, of this study, because it is a very special result that today’s Albanians have a strong genetic closeness with the early Middle Ages, especially with one of these samples that is actually from southeastern Albania.

The closeness is such that it can be said that it is more or less like a connection between two distant cousins ​​despite the difference of about 1200 years in time. So the genetic profile remains from that period almost the same profile as in the Middle Ages. The connection with bronze is normally about 3000 years old, so there are differences, but it is a normal phenomenon, it is a phenomenon that has a genetic profile.

The first is also influenced by the arrival of other peoples, we said we have approximately 15% from the east, approximately 15% from Central and Eastern Europe, and it also changes over time. There are several mechanisms. One of the main ones is called genetic drift.

And populations that go through strong demographic phenomena such as the contraction or expansion of the population that we have tend to have a pronounced genetic drift. So there is a difference between bronze, the genetic profile of bronze and today’s profile, but it is clear that they are related and it is not about a break and a disruption, but more about a gradual evolution.

So, the connection remains, they are not identical, but the connection is strong. What was learned about the Albanian Arbëro ethnogenesis from this study and how does DNA data illuminate the process of the formation of Albanians as a separate group in the early Middle Ages?

Ethnogenesis is a key period where the transition from these ancient Balkan tribes to the formation of the Arbëro or Albanian ethnicity occurs and for this reason it has been constantly discussed both in historiography and in linguistics.

There are different theories about when it began and when it ended as a process and now and with genetic data we can make a contribution to the dating of this phenomenon. And again there are two types of evidence that serve us for this purpose. In terms of the general origin we distinguish that every province, all Albanians of every province have this component of descent from the east which is now about 15%.

There may be somewhere 10, somewhere 20, but the average is 15 and it is relatively constant. This makes us think that the Albanian ethnogenesis could begin more or less in that period or a little later when this eastern origin arrived and we know that it arrived with the establishment of Roman rule.

So the beginning of the Albanian ethnogenesis must be starting from the first or second century of our era or a little later. As for the Slavic origin, we see that there are greater differences between the regions. There is no region with zero because of the Slavs, but there are greater differences and this suggests that the arrival of the origin from Eastern Europe was later than the beginning of the Albanian ethnogenesis.

So some of the natural Albanian lines were already expanding at the time when the Slavs settled in the Balkans. These suggest the donas and these lead us to a date around the third century to the fifth century of ethnogenesis perhaps it continued a little later but this is the period that seems most likely to us and more or less the same thing we see in the paternal lines because in general our paleobalkan lines have in common a contraction the “botlek botnlek” effect in English a contraction in the Roman period or at the end of the Paromac period and then a demographic explosion in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

This coincides with the period that I mentioned as the end of the search for common ancestry. So again both lines of evidence lead us to the same period that from the Albanian point of view is somewhere between the third century and the fifth century so 12.00 approximately to 1800 years ago. The study was attended by a large group of Albanian and international researchers in the field of population genetics led by different international research institutions.

I think our study shows that when people in the Balkans unite their forces together, they can do really great things and multidisciplinarity and having an international team really defined a research. So the main universities and institutions involved the University of Oxford in the UK, Telviv University in Israel, the Albanian Academy of Sciences, the Ohio State University and the European University in Cyprus and each colleague brought their own unique set of expertise that is needed to such a complicated. people in aspects of population genetics. We had historians and we also had linguists and together we really gave up we really produced a very good result in my personal opinion and interdisciplinarity and international collaboration really was crucial for to achieving this project.

In science you may use innovative tools to answer fundamental questions but then you open even more questions. I think our study will certainly represent the framework the backbone of future studies on the origins of the Albanians but of course we haven answered you know haven answered everything there are some questions that remain and what we lack is ancient DNA samples from the iron age and latent equity in Kosovo for example and also latent equity samples from the area of ​​present day Albania and these samples, these periods are key to our understanding of earlier Albanian ethnesis. Can it be said today on scientific grounds that the Albanians are among the oldest populations of the Balkans? Does this study refute the narrative that the Albanians are latecomers?

All presentations from three main sources of people because all mixed ancestral Greeks and others then in the Roman period especially you get an influx of people from what is now Asia minor the Middle East and then during the migration period you get the arrival of Slavic ancestry and all people in the Balans ancestrytour and can Albanians indeed do display a very considerable proportion of bronze age and iron age central and western Balkan ancestry Albaniah reget balans based on exhaustive scientific tools that we used and of course ancient DNA we definitely saw As Leonidas said, there is no population in Europe that we can say is pure race. Well, every population has had its own contacts, its own mixtures, but in the case of the Albanians we can say that the vast majority, namely 2/3 or 3/4 of our ancestry comes from the ancient tribes of the Central and Western Balkans.

If we compare it with other peoples of Europe, especially in Eastern Europe, this percentage is generally lower because the settlement of Slavic tribes in the seventh century here in the Balkans, but also the spread there in Eastern Europe, had a much more pronounced impact.

So there is a difference here, but we cannot say that we are 100% descendants of the peoples of our lands 4,000 years ago. Yes, 70-75%, which is the vast majority of our period. So we have this genetic heritage. So, according to the study, it is clear that we have Illyrian genetic heritage, but it is not known exactly which parts of the Western and Central Balkans or which tribes have made a genetic contribution and how much. This is something that we intend to shed light on a little further.

It is a part that for its discovery we need results from ancient bones, as I said in the period of antiquity and the Roman period especially in Albania, but also especially in Kosovo because we have a speculation, I can say for the moment because we do not have complete data, that Kosovo and the western part of Macedonia may have an important role in the origin of the Albanians, perhaps even in the period of ethnogenesis, but without data we cannot say this for sure.

So the main goal for the future is to work to collect as many bones as possible from Albania, from Macedonia, from Kosovo and to have a more complete picture of each period with results from each period and then compare it with today’s results and with previous results and have an uninterrupted chain of descent. of our nation.

Well, this is the main goal for the moment. We will try to realize it as soon as possible. I believe that with this article that was published it is clear that the topic of the origins of the Albanians is an interesting topic that can even take up space in the most prestigious world journals. I also believe that it was proven that with results from antiquity and with today’s database it is possible to draw important conclusions.

So we hope to collect new data and push this knowledge we have even further. We suggest that a lot of the early origins of the Albanians can be found in central and northern Albania and based on linguistics and some genetic findings.

Kosovo North Macedonia would have been quite important for the ethnogenesis of the Albanians so I think as I said previously if we have ancient DNA from key periods from these areas we will be able to really answer even more definitively the origins of In essence, the study shows that the main genetic basis of the Albanians is very ancient in the Balkans. there is admixture, but not complete replacement of the population and the genetic continuity in this area is among the most stable in the region compared to some other parts of Southeast Europe.

I think one sentence summary would be that Albanians carrying a very significant portion the the genetic legacy of the people from the central and western Balkans from the bronze age and the iron age which is very interesting and very unique.

The study published in the prestigious journal Nature does not put an ethnic stamp on the past, it is telling us something deeper that the history of Albanians is built on a long human continuity in this area, shaped by thousands of years of movement, mixing and adaptation. And perhaps the most important question that remains is not only where we come from, but also how we were formed as a people during this thousands of year journey.

Sources and citations

*   Study published in Nature Human Behavior

*   Ancient DNA studies

*   Linguistics

*   Archaeology

*   Historical chronicles and documents

*   Previous studies on the Balkans and Albanian origins

*   Studies on population genetics

*   Samples from the Bronze Age

*   Samples from Antiquity

*   Samples from the Middle Ages

*   Samples from the Iron Age

*   Samples from the Roman period

*   Samples from Kosovo

*   Samples from North Macedonia

*   University of Oxford

*   Tel Aviv University

*   Albanian Academy of Sciences

*   Ohio State University

*   European University in Cyprus

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