Albanians

[arthas]

australoserbicus said:

This is a pretty recent phenomenon in which Albanians are trying to stake their claim on alot of land that Serbia currently controls. They figure by jumping on the "we are descendats of Illyrians" platform they have ultimate rights to the land that Serbia "occupies" since Serbs are Slavic invaders who came after the Illyrians on the Balkan peninsula.

What alot do not realize is that both Serbia & Croatia jumped on the same bandwagon a 100 or so years ago but gave up on the idea, as it distanced them from Slavic Russia who, in Serbia's case anyway was a powerful ally.

In reality, both have about an equal stake in being Illyrian descendants. In the Serbs case however they took on the Slavic language which gives most the impression that they are purely Slavic. With Albanians, it is assumed that since their language is somewhat unique, it must mean it is of Illyrian dialect.

The reason i say both are almost equally "Illyrian" is that if we assume that Albanians are Illyrian descendants, then Serbs too should be given that both are primarily of the Dinaric sub-race (According to Albo-Illyrian studies, most Illyrian people were also Dinaric...I say thats possible but i'm not 100%) .

It just shits me sometimes when Albanians start naming their kids ancient Illyrian names & then use it in their 'We are Illyrian argument' as proof... Its only been the last 50 or so years they have started naming their kids this to help further their "Illyrian" agenda.

At the end of the day both Albanians & Serbs are closer racially then most of them are comfortable with & if either one is an Illyrian descendant, then so is the other.

Thats my 2 cents.

Albanians "claim" lands that have an owerwhelming Albanian population, if those lands happen to be in Serbia it is not the fault of albanians. I think that the borders of balkan are made by the great powers. The same powers that decided after the congress of Berlin that lands with large albanian population belong to Serbia, are the same ones that decided to bomb Serbia in 1999.

"we are descendats of Illyrians" platform that many albanians use is not different from "where is a Serbian grave or church is Serbian land no matter who lives there" platform that serbian nacionalists use. In the town of Saranda in southern albania archeologists have found the ruins of a synagoge from 300 a.d. does it mean that the land belong to jews now, and in the middle of albania archeologists have found the ruins of a gothic church from 500 a.d. so it must mean that the land belong to the Swedes.

Many Albanian want to give their children non religious names . So if an Albanian names his son Bardhyl it may mean that he has taken the name from the king of Dardania Bardhylis but also because Bardhyll(white star in english) is a word that has a meaning in modern albanian language too. No Albanian for example names his son Diocletian because even though he was of Illyrian origine his name has no meaning in albanian language.

[attis]

Illyria is a rather vast region. There were probably several languages spoken there. It is very likely the Albanians are just a continuation of one of these groups in that region. The ancient Illyrians are still with us today as the Albanians, Serbs, Croats, etc. People do not vanish. They may lose their language, but their genes are still here. So everyone in the region of ancient Illyrian can claim descent from the Illyrians.

[australoserbicus]

attis said:

Illyria is a rather vast region. There were probably several languages spoken there. It is very likely the Albanians are just a continuation of one of these groups in that region. The ancient Illyrians are still with us today as the Albanians, Serbs, Croats, etc. People do not vanish. They may lose their language, but their genes are still here. So everyone in the region of ancient Illyrian can claim descent from the Illyrians.

I agree with the above.

As for the for the naming part, i have no objections to Albanians naming their kids Illyrian names...Just don't use it as evidence in an argument about being Illyrian cause only recently have they used these names but they try and give the impression that they havent stopped using them since the times of Illyria.

As for poplulation, They have only become a majority in one of the disputed areas (Kosovo) in recent times. This is thanks to Tito not allowing Serb people from Kosovo back to their homes in WW2 & inviting huge numbers of Albanian refugees to settle in Kosovo as a "gesture of good will". When you couple this with a huge birth rate of 5 to 10 kids per family. Albanians becoming a majority was possible. I should also add that a considerable amount of Serbs were forced to leave Kosovo during tito's Yugoslavia by Albanians themselves using thug like pressure on the people forcing them to move.

I have spoken to a number of Kosovo Albanians & have many as friends & i have overheard many a conversation between the elders when visiting my friends to give me the impression that the Kosovo (overpopulating it with Albanians, buying out Serb property, etc, etc) has been an important Albanian agenda for a while.

But i also give them a bit of credit with Kosovo, they have worked pretty hard for it & the Serbs did'nt. I know alot of Serbs say they could'nt given the circumstance but im sure you can always do more.

But i still agree with what attis said above & i just hope Albanians stop thinking that they are the one & only descendants of the Illyrians & accept that others in the region are probably just as much as they are.

We really need genetic testing on the issue.

[Dean]

byz said:

Hey Dean - the man in the centre with the name Borovas looks very Greek to me - Med with gracile features. The other two looks like Alpine-Med mixes with Alpine predominating. I really can't see a strong or obvious Slavic admixture. It only really takes one ancestor to impart a surname. R1a - that Y chromosome marker found in high percentages in Slavic speaking populations is overall quite low in Greece. He looks like a native Greek - and if there was a Slav ancestor somewhere along the line, it looks like his progeny were completely assimilated by the natives of the region. He actually resembles my grand-father a great deal - I posted this pic before, and Dienekes put it on the Greek Anthropology site - my grand-father from Corinth is named Periandros. Incidentally, an ancient tyrant of Corinth was also named Periandros, and my grandfather looks scarily similar to this representation of him -

The similarity of your grandfather to the ancient tyrant is beyond amazing, especially the nose and the identical name. The similarity between your grandfather and my relative is also amazing, especially the mouth and even the same mustache! Pardon my mistake, but the woman in the picture, Borovas' wife, Eleni Alimisis, is my paternal grandfather's sister, not my maternal grandfather's sister. Borovas was a relative of my mom's mom. That's endogamy for you. Your grandfather looks a little like a cross between Borovas and my great uncle in the picture, Spiridon Alimisis, except your grandfather has bigger eyes.

When I was in Greece I visited the Borovas family, who lived very high up on an Arcadian mountain. Even though in the valley it was real hot, at night we froze in their house.

The Greeks were resilient. Even though I read that Corinth was razed by the Romans, and there were other invasions of the Peloponnese, there are plenty of areas in Greece where indigenous populations could have found refuge.

[arthas]

australoserbicus said:

As for the for the naming part, i have no objections to Albanians naming their kids Illyrian names...Just don't use it as evidence in an argument about being Illyrian cause only recently have they used these names but they try and give the impression that they havent stopped using them since the times of Illyria.

As for poplulation, They have only become a majority in one of the disputed areas (Kosovo) in recent times. This is thanks to Tito not allowing Serb people from Kosovo back to their homes in WW2 & inviting huge numbers of Albanian refugees to settle in Kosovo as a "gesture of good will". When you couple this with a huge birth rate of 5 to 10 kids per family. Albanians becoming a majority was possible. I should also add that a considerable amount of Serbs were forced to leave Kosovo during tito's Yugoslavia by Albanians themselves using thug like pressure on the people forcing them to move.

I have spoken to a number of Kosovo Albanians & have many as friends & i have overheard many a conversation between the elders when visiting my friends to give me the impression that the Kosovo (overpopulating it with Albanians, buying out Serb property, etc, etc) has been an important Albanian agenda for a while.

But i also give them a bit of credit with Kosovo, they have worked pretty hard for it & the Serbs did'nt. I know alot of Serbs say they could'nt given the circumstance but im sure you can always do more.

But i still agree with what attis said above & i just hope Albanians stop thinking that they are the one & only descendants of the Illyrians & accept that others in the region are probably just as much as they are.

We really need genetic testing on the issue.

The names you call Illyrian are simply taken from words that exist in Albanian language, as i said before thay are names that parents give their kids because they dont want to give them religios sounding names , those names have nothing to do with the Illyria, how many Serbs were named Zoran, Dragan or Slobodan 60 or 70 years ago.

About the kosovo population, somone in another post said that Albanians occupied Kosovo and displaced serbs with the help of nazis during WW2, you are sayng that we occupied kosovo with the help of Tito efter WW2, im not suprised that few years from now some of you will say that we occupied and conolized kosovo with the help of NATO.

[australoserbicus]

arthas said:

australoserbicus said:

As for the for the naming part, i have no objections to Albanians naming their kids Illyrian names...Just don't use it as evidence in an argument about being Illyrian cause only recently have they used these names but they try and give the impression that they havent stopped using them since the times of Illyria.

As for poplulation, They have only become a majority in one of the disputed areas (Kosovo) in recent times. This is thanks to Tito not allowing Serb people from Kosovo back to their homes in WW2 & inviting huge numbers of Albanian refugees to settle in Kosovo as a "gesture of good will". When you couple this with a huge birth rate of 5 to 10 kids per family. Albanians becoming a majority was possible. I should also add that a considerable amount of Serbs were forced to leave Kosovo during tito's Yugoslavia by Albanians themselves using thug like pressure on the people forcing them to move.

I have spoken to a number of Kosovo Albanians & have many as friends & i have overheard many a conversation between the elders when visiting my friends to give me the impression that the Kosovo (overpopulating it with Albanians, buying out Serb property, etc, etc) has been an important Albanian agenda for a while.

But i also give them a bit of credit with Kosovo, they have worked pretty hard for it & the Serbs did'nt. I know alot of Serbs say they could'nt given the circumstance but im sure you can always do more.

But i still agree with what attis said above & i just hope Albanians stop thinking that they are the one & only descendants of the Illyrians & accept that others in the region are probably just as much as they are.

We really need genetic testing on the issue.

The names you call Illyrian are simply taken from words that exist in Albanian language, as i said before thay are names that parents give their kids because they dont want to give them religios sounding names , those names have nothing to do with the Illyria, how many Serbs were named Zoran, Dragan or Slobodan 60 or 70 years ago.

About the kosovo population, somone in another post said that Albanians occupied Kosovo and displaced serbs with the help of nazis during WW2, you are sayng that we occupied kosovo with the help of Tito efter WW2, im not suprised that few years from now some of you will say that we occupied and conolized kosovo with the help of NATO.

During WW2 it was with the help of the Nazis & fascists. After WW2 it was with the help of Tito. In each case an anti -Serb agenda was involved, The Nazis because of Serbia's part in WW1 before that. One just has to look at Tito's conduct regarding the Kosovo issue to see a clearly anti-Serb agenda (not letting Serbs return to their homes after WW2, Allowing influx of Albanian refugees after WW2, Giving Kosovo autonamy, etc).
As for NATO, they to are guilty of the same agenda, You'd have to be blind not to see an anti-Serb agenda on their part, just look at media campaign & military actions in the last decade & tell me they were un-biased or impartial to the problems in the Balkans.

The Albanians have a very good USA lobby at their disposal, funded for the most part by illegal activities (Everyone in the Balkans know this).

As for the names, you say "The names you call Illyrian are simply taken from words that exist in Albanian language"

But how long have they been in the Albanian language?

[labi]

that is BS. kosovar albs are not immigrants from albania some 40-50 years ago. did they come from albania in 1700s and 1800s, yes but thats a long time ago. at that time serbs settled vojvodina, no one today questions the serbian hold of vojvodina.

during hoxhas days albanian population increased not decreased. it started from barely over 1 million in 1045 to 3 mill in 1989. if there was a mass migration away from albania the population should have tripled in 3 years.

most important, what the hell do you know? are you from albania? the borders were closed in albania in communist days. and please dont tell me than in the time of modern filmography and photography no serb could manage to take one photograph or one film of this alb immigrants from albania?? what kind of BS are you selling here? its funny how you guys claim serbs opened their doors to alb immigrants. of all people serbians. LOL
do you even know the balkan mentality? if someone alien start settling in your village in big numbers, it means war. youre claiming alb immigrants took over thousand of villages.LOL with no struggle at all.
albs of kosovo have their own traditions, dialect, and other cultural variation from albanians of albania. such diffrences require alot of time not only 2 generations. LOL

kosovar albanians were settled even in south albania in communist days. what am i saying? some alb kosovars fled kosovo hoping for a better life in albania. it got worse actually. land in albania is poor, they owned no property. in kosovo they owned plenty of lands, even owned a car. the dictator hoxha was afraid they were yugo spies. most of turks with albanian ancestory are kosovo albs that were expelled prior ww2.

most important, here are straight forward evidence. maps from early 19th century and early 20th century.........








even a pro-slavic map


yugoslavia 1932

[labi]

ps hpw can you explain this article.
folk.uio.no/toreww/Dr.%20Vaso%20Cubrilovic.htm

this was writen in 1937, before the time tito supposedly "drove alb immigrants with his truck into kosovo.

[labi]

look a map from your famous serbian scientist cvijic


even in his map, where even albs of albania are labeled
as alb-speaking serbs , and serbian pockets in south
albania kosovo still is shown has having a significant
albanian presence. even in a biased serbian map.

[australoserbicus]

dude, your posting mainly ottoman era maps in which Albanians had a fair bit of control of Kosovo thanks to the preferential treatment they got from the ottomans.

I think i maybe a little mis-understood in that i do believe that there have always been Albanians in Kosovo, the way they became a majority is the only part that concerns me.

Also i know of balkan mentality & of Albanians, in particular Kosovo Albanians, in fact at one stage they made up around 70% of my friends so i know them very well. My interest in Kosovo also spans from the fact that my fathers family originated from their & had to migrate north due to ottoman issues around 350-400 years back, well thats as far back as he can trace his family tree.

And dude it is also well known about post WW2 migrations of Albanians to Kosovo to join the already present Albanian population there to seek a better life in the more prosperous Yugoslavia. I'm sure there were a few cases in which the went in opposing directions but you can't deny that a very large amount settled to Kosovo to join there bretheren in post WW2.

I may also be coming off as a little anti-Albanian, but i'm not really, i actually believe Serbs & Kosovo Albs share alot of genetics given they look alike (Dinaric looking). This to me shows shared genetics rather than possible enviromental effects causing Dinaricism.

[australoserbicus]

oops my bad maybe not 'mainly ottoman maps' but there are still some of them there. And alot of the others appear to be from Serb enemies ie germans.

[australoserbicus]

Anywayz all that is the past & now we must focus on the future... I just hope the both parties in the Kosovo final solution can compromise. What do you think is the best solution for current day Kosovo?

[attis]

Albanians and Serbs do share much in common. Both have Illyrian genes. Every ethnic group has a right of self determination. The problem which plagues the world is that many geographic areas have mixed populations, many of which are so mixed that one cannot really draw neat clean ethnic maps. Look at Bosnia, it is a patch work of Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks, so it erupted into civil war while countries like Slovenia which are mostly homogenous had it a lot easier. Most of the world's problems today were caused by poor decisions of the powers that were who just almost randomly drew borders with little regard for the people who live between their lines. :/

Very nice maps by the way!

[byz]

dean said:

byz said:

Hey Dean - the man in the centre with the name Borovas looks very Greek to me - Med with gracile features. The other two looks like Alpine-Med mixes with Alpine predominating. I really can't see a strong or obvious Slavic admixture. It only really takes one ancestor to impart a surname. R1a - that Y chromosome marker found in high percentages in Slavic speaking populations is overall quite low in Greece. He looks like a native Greek - and if there was a Slav ancestor somewhere along the line, it looks like his progeny were completely assimilated by the natives of the region. He actually resembles my grand-father a great deal - I posted this pic before, and Dienekes put it on the Greek Anthropology site - my grand-father from Corinth is named Periandros. Incidentally, an ancient tyrant of Corinth was also named Periandros, and my grandfather looks scarily similar to this representation of him -

The similarity of your grandfather to the ancient tyrant is beyond amazing, especially the nose and the identical name. The similarity between your grandfather and my relative is also amazing, especially the mouth and even the same mustache! Pardon my mistake, but the woman in the picture, Borovas' wife, Eleni Alimisis, is my paternal grandfather's sister, not my maternal grandfather's sister. Borovas was a relative of my mom's mom. That's endogamy for you. Your grandfather looks a little like a cross between Borovas and my great uncle in the picture, Spiridon Alimisis, except your grandfather has bigger eyes.

When I was in Greece I visited the Borovas family, who lived very high up on an Arcadian mountain. Even though in the valley it was real hot, at night we froze in their house.

The Greeks were resilient. Even though I read that Corinth was razed by the Romans, and there were other invasions of the Peloponnese, there are plenty of areas in Greece where indigenous populations could have found refuge.

Exactly - plus, whenever the invaded regions were reconquered, Greeks from other parts of Greece or the empire were re-introduced to Hellenise the invaders. And whilst Corinth was destroyed by the Romans, and the population supposedly slaughtered or sold off into slavery - there is actual evidence of minimal habitation in the following years, before Corinth was rebuilt (when Greeks came back, anyway). The name of the village that my family comes from is "Vochaikos" - "Vocha" is the name of an agricultural plain (my family grows grapes and makes wine), and the "ikos" probably comes from "oikos" meaning house, or "oikogenia" meaning family. PS - tha Arcadian mountains must have been beautiful - what time of year were you there?

[Dean]

Byz, I was on the Arcadian mountain in the summer. I remember that people would take siestas when it was real hot, and I, being an American who was unfamiliar with the weather in the afternoon, suffered in the heat when I was kicking a soccer ball around by myself.

I am waiting for more genetic information on people from my area. I wonder how my area compares with the rest of Greece. Patras, in one study, has a very high percentage of Neolithic haplogroup E3b.

Some of my relatives have relatively rare Greek surnames, like Priovolos. I did an Ellis Island search for Priovolos immigrants in the U.S. and found that Priovolos people are from Arcadia, Elis, Sterea Ellas and even Kerkyra. I haven't done much genealogical research on my relatives. Maybe someday I'll try to start a family tree. I talked to my relatives, but they don't know much beyond a generation or two. I wonder, though, if there was strict endogamy in Greece, if people from certain regions married only people from their regions, for many years before our modern age.