Balkanite
Regular Member
- Messages
- 175
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- Y-DNA haplogroup
- J2b2-L283
I agree with your edit. Please understand that I usually write from work when I have some time to spare, and I often have to hurry to write replies on the forum. I cannot always word things in the best possible way.
Of course I agree with all this. I don't know why you mention the possibility that Albanians descend from a medieval Ottoman expansion. That never crossed my mind once. Albanians have hardly any Turkic/Mongoloid admixture, and their main Y-DNA lineages (E-V13, J2b1, J2b2) are rare in most of Turkey. Likewise typical Turkish lineages (G2a-M406, R1a-Z93, Q1a, N1c, E-M84, J1, many subclades of J2a1) are virtually absent from Albania.
It's hard to consider a point a view that never crossed your mind because there is no data to support it. So I didn't think it was necessary to disprove that the Albanians aren't Turks. It's just so obvious.
I admit that I don't really understand why there is so much disagreement and conflicts between Balkanic countries. Genetics show that, autosomally at least, you are all pretty close to one another. The division is more cultural and linguistic. Of course Macedonians and Serbs have more Slavic DNA, but it's still a minority of their genome compared to the local Balkanic admxiture. Just look at the Greeks. You don't see North Greeks arguing or fighting with Cretans/Aegeans or vice versa because the former have Slavic and Germanic DNA that the latter lack. Same in France. An ethnically German Alsatians can live perfectly well in peace with a ethnically Basque Gascon, an ethnically Welsh Breton or an ethnically Ligurian Niçois. Why can't you do the same in the Balkans?
Yes i know it is absurd to bring up theories of Ottoman origin for the Albanians. But in the common impression among non-albanian balkanites(those who doesn't know about genetics of course), is that Albanians are land-grabbing intruders who have nothing to do with Illyrians. And the sad part is that some of those propaganda spreaders actually use genetics superficially to support their theories.
They were even close to convincing me at one point. It was maybe 2-3 years ago, before the I2-Din clade was very known of.
I saw people everywhere posting maps of Y-DNA I2 distribution, and i even saw Albanians claiming that the Illyrians were I2(because of modern distribution), and because of that, they all believed that bosniaks and croats actually were the real Illyrians(slavizised), while E-v13 and J2b2 Albanians came from Turkey and from Egypt in modern times. Because at that time we didn't know that I2-Din had actually spread pretty recently from a common forefather 1500-2000 years ago.
And yea i agree with you in that is is not optimal that people in the balkans fight each other all the time and on every occasion.
If it was up to me we should just hold some kind of grand poll, where every village from Pelepponese to Istria to the carpathians would vote on which of the neighboring countries they want to belong to. But that is highly unrealistic in todays politics.
I also believe that the reason that the greeks don't fight each other, is that they have built a strong national identity during the last 200 years. I am a classical archeologist myself, so i practically read about greeks and romans several hours a day. And i have seen how much positive literature have been written by Germans, Englishmen, Italians, French etc. about the greek culture. And trust me, so much positive literature and glorification of one people is enough to make it so honorable to belong to that ethnicity/culture, that is is hard to convince a member of that culture to become something else. Slavs and albanians do not have that kind of strong national identity approved by all the great powers, so our leaders know that we are prone to assimilation. So that is what they do, our political leaders, they set us up against each other so they can grab land from neighboring countries, and eventually pour more money and resources into their own aristocratic class. And in the end neither the albanians nor the serbians have a say in what will happen, Russia and America fund and control these things. So what we see in the balkans is basically the "front" between russia and america(like ukrainealso is). But of course they won't use their own soldiers. And that is natural of course, the front go to be somewhere. But sometimes i just feel like the Albanians are not supported enough.
There is a great example which happened around 1650 or something. Where Venetians and Spaniards(and all other westerners of course) wanted to push the ottomans out of the balkans. But they lacked information regarding how many armies and how large a fleet the ottomans had around the balkans, and where they had them. An albanian, Antonio Bruni(or Bruti) had scouted all of the Ottoman territories in modern Albania, and he had actually figured out precisely how many ships, men, guns and ammunition would be needed to push them out. And he also had gathered large numbers of Albanians who were ready to fight off the Ottomans. But In the end, after several months of waiting for an answer, his request was denied by the other westerners. That resulted in several defeats, and expansion of the ottoman empire into Europe, and that the ottomans would stay in europe for another 300 years. That is a classic example how we albanians are always kept on front line, but never supported enough from behind.
Basically the same situation today, except that the wars are brought out on paper more than on the battlefield. The whole western world knows how albanians used to occupy the whole of western balkans, and that we still have huge numbers of albanians in the neighboring countries, but nobody does anything to stop the eastern advance towards the adriatic.