Where does the Albanian language come from? [VIDEO]

Johane Derite said:

It's very messy since there are so many influences from greeks, italics, and also the possibility of other balkan groups.
Testing dna in their main older cities in the heart of Messapia, like Oria, Manduria, etc, might give a clearer picture about what was going on.
I remember reading from leonard palmer that he argued that messapic lamguage came around 700s bc as an easternising influence of horse riding as opposed to horse driving.
I read in an other article that daunians had contact with dalmatia since at least middle bronze age via gargano. So if there were multiple waves of differing balkan peoples this also makes it messier.

Click to expand...

torzio said:

whatever link you have with messapic and Albania is due to the Messapic trading with Albania , the people on the Albanian coast be it epirotes or whoever learnt some messapic words........it is not the other way around.............this trade only began circa 400BC , due to the fact that the messpics and Daunians led an isolated/closed society who only traded with croatians...ie Liburnians

Click to expand...

Excine said:

@Johane Do not credit Matzinger with theories he has never written. Matzinger does not argue that Messapian is more closely related to Greek and Phrygian due to its position in a Balkanic IE or that Albanian is more closely related to Messapian than to Illyrian of the Illyrii proprie dicti. You are attempting to lend credibility to your personal theories by attributing them to a linguist.


Illyrian is the language of the Illyrian proprie dicti, according to Matzinger. According to Matzinger, neither the Iapodes nor any other northern/middle/inner Illyrian tribe spoke "Illyrian." This is simply his terminology; it does not imply that they did not speak a mutually intelligible language that belonged to the same group as "Illyrian."




Daunians and Messapians belonged to the same people, spoke the same language, and were regarded by all as the same people. The notion that we should "differentiate" them is an absurd fringe theory that nobody supports.


You wish to distinguish them because you refuse to believe that J-L283 and E-V13 spoke the same language. Illyrians are the only ancient people to have a single haplogroup, according to fringe theories promoted by the same people who claimed Albanians originated in the Caucasus a decade ago. In any case, we are beginning to discover E-V13 in the western Balkans during antiquity, and that's what will remain recorded in history.

Click to expand...

torzio said:

as you say.............Daunians, Messapians belong to the same North Balkan group Iapodes ...............which is nowhere near Montenegro and the Illyrian proprie dicti .................
So you say Illyrian from Illyrian proprie dicti are speaking a different language to the Iapodes Messapic, Daunian Illyrians

Click to expand...

Excine said:

You wish to distinguish them because you refuse to believe that J-L283 and E-V13 spoke the same language. Illyrians are the only ancient people to have a single haplogroup, according to fringe theories promoted by the same people who claimed Albanians originated in the Caucasus a decade ago. In any case, we are beginning to discover E-V13 in the western Balkans during antiquity, and that's what will remain recorded in history.

Click to expand...

mount123 said:

What kind of pseudo scientific wishful thinking non sense is this? E1b-V13 did absolutely not spread from the ancient East Adriatic zone and has nothing to do with core Illyrians. E1b-V13 is completely absent in Iron Age Illyrians and taking one AD sample whose carrier is a Roman infant as a proof that E1b-V13 is core Illyrian is laughable.

I hope that the mods will take some action against these troll accounts who derail every thread, even linguistic ones, and make them about haplogroups.

This is the aDNA map of J2b-L283 (© Trojet) with links to scientific papers:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...QX&ll=47.8338817092451,23.233682563547568&z=5

Click to expand...

Illyria said:

Could DNA alone solve the puzzle of the Proto-Albanian language?

What I mean by that is, once we get samples from Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosova, and we have more J2b2/E-V13/R1b samples, with more specific matching clades in modern Albanians, would we be able to get a closer look at how these subclades rose and fell? To spot which specific subclades rose or fell in synchronicity, or alone, etc.

Like how Riverman made that chart of the J-L283, R-L2, E-V13 haplogroups, except this would need specific clades from Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosova.

Maybe this could give deep clues on when certain clades rose and fell in Modern Albanians, like instead of having a chart for all E-V13 and all J-L283, it would be for the specific ones found in the upcoming papers

Maybe we'll be able to find out which ones did well from 200BC-500AD, and 500AD-1200AD, 1200-1500, etc.

Might be able to see some competition, or alliances, in certain times periods

Click to expand...

Riverman said:

The first step is to trace down where the major modern Albanian lineages lived at which time, how they migrated and when they had major founder effects. Like we know for Proto-Germanics that I-M253 and R-L106 went in synchrony from a specific time frame onwards, concrete, after the Urnfieldisation/unified cremation horizon of the Nordic Bronze Age was established and confirmed by the time of the formation and first expansion of Jastorf. So we have two events, which likely can be associated with Proto- and early Germanics, like the Urnfieldisation of the NBA and the formatoin of Jastorf.

For the Albanian case we already have some dates for the moderns, and we can see related founder effects, but that's really late. The main Albanian lineages go in synchrony somewhere between 100 AD to 1.300 AD. A good position might be reached, but this is really vague and speculative, around 600 AD.
That's by going after the main haplogroups E-V13, J-L283, R-PF7563, R-CTS9219 (R-CTS1450).

It might look somewhat different already if just counting actual Albanian lineages.

Before 100 AD the general haplogroups (not Albanian specific) are very weakly to not at all correlated. In fact, they are even contradictory, like when J-L283 expanded E-V13 goes down and vice versa, same for R-PF7563, R-CTS9219.

If someone could do such a correlation analysis specifically for the Albanian subclades of these haplogroups, which is somewhat more tricky than for the general one, just going after the TMRCA dates, it could probably help. Because by going after the haplogroups in general, they could have been largely separated lineages up to at least 100 AD, probably even much later.

Because if lineages share a fate, if reaching a certain size, numbers, they usually go in synchrony, just like we can see it for the Germanic and Slavic lineages. If e.g. some E-V13 joined successfully the Slavs and expanded with them, its visible, because they go up with the Slavic main lineages. This is something we can see looking at YFull data alone.

For the Albanian lineages specifically, there were major founder effects, fairly late, these show up. How far back they go, that's open to debate - going by the general data, not before 100 AD, but probably the Albanian-specific data is different - though I doubt it.

Also note the size-numbers of E-V13. It can't have been confined to a small Eastern South Balkan area - if you compare it with the data from J-L283. Much to big and geographically even wider spread.

Click to expand...

Archetype0ne said:

"Before 100 AD the general haplogroups (not Albanian specific) are very weakly to not at all correlated. In fact, they are even contradictory, like when J-L283 expanded E-V13 goes down and vice versa, same for R-PF7563, R-CTS9219."

Biggest cap.

Are we looking at the same data here? Like what?
When even one owns data contradicts their claims. C'mon are we supposed not to look at the data and just at the wall of text?

Click to expand...

The Dacian Wars (101?102, 105?106) were two military campaigns fought between the Roman Empire and Dacia during Emperor Trajan's rule.

Click to expand...

Riverman said:

The problem is, that if we assume a going into synchrony and sharing fate means they interlocked and didn't leave again. Obviously, being both Carpatho-Balkan lineages, for the most part, they shared specific events. Like the Scythian and La Tene Celtic invasions affected them both negatively at first, you see the dents, but they reacted differently afterwards. Like E-V13 had one of its biggest expansions with Scythianised groups, after the Scythian invasion. J-L283 shows absolutely no sign of this. Even more important, some of the modern Albanian E-V13 subclades likely participated in this Scythianised expansions.

With the Celtic dent its different, both go down and up, but E-V13 double time of J-L283. Here you could argue they share the same fate, and its true, but this was affecting all of the Carpatho-Balkans, almost, so it doesn't tell us how closely they were, exactly.

My main concern is the Roman conquest period: E-V13 had its darkest hours (about 0-200 AD in particular), going down to nothing, no new founder lineages at all in this period. At the same time, J-L283 stays stable and keeps growing. That's a major out of synchrony moment, which needs to be explained.

When E-V13 goes up again, one could argue it looks like they closed the gap, but in fact, these later E-V13 upturns can be brought into synchrony with Germanic and Slavic migration and growth events as well. You see the solid uptick of E-V13 in the Slavic expansion period: That's 100 % in synchrony with the Southern-Eastern Slavic expansion of R1a and I2a. J-L283 goes down right there, but probably the Balkan E-V13 lineages did also, especially those in the early Albanians, that needs to be checked.

But what really bothers me the most is this Roman era complete out of sync moment for E-V13 and J-L283. E-V13 was more than double time as big as J-L283, and it goes down to zero growth, zero, nothing, after Roman conquest. That's so huge, its the single most important negative impact E-V13 ever experienced and its right in the time of the Roman conquest.

Its very tempting to associate that with the catastrophic defeats, wars, famines, uprisings and demographic downward trends assocated with the Roman era in the Celtic, Sarmatian, Dacian and Thracian regions. Very tempting to do so. For that time there is zero correlation between E-V13 and J-L283, so they had completely different trajectories. Completely different.

Even if going for the Albanian subclades, we already see that it must have affected them too, because E-V13 had zero growth in that time, zero!

For such a major lineage of Europe, which grew so consistently, even during times of wars and tumult, since the Early Bronze Age, never going down that much, you just can't overestimate these numbers. If you read up what happened especially to the Dacians/Daco-Celtic people in that time period, being attacked from all sides, like the Roman conquest of Dacia and the Germanic attacks on the Free Dacians, its very, very tempting to associate it that way.

And the recovery period of E-V13 was mostly carried on by tribals, not by Roman territories. You can see the first significant uptick being completely Slavic related and going against J-L283, which did not signficantly grow with Slavs. You see the dent, right about 600 AD for J-L283, while E-V13 goes steeply up, completely in sync with R1a and I2a Slavic clades.

So in the Roman period the two major Albanian haplogroups are diametral to each other, same for the Slavic expansion phase, but less pronounced. There are not small issues or events, these are no small numbers which could be explained by "chance".

It simply looks also like J-L283 was conquered by the Romans significantly earlier, like 1-2 centuries earlier. This affected E-V13 as well, negatively. But the J-L283 did fairly well after that, recovered and were growing, whereas E-V13 was cut yet again, like "the second half" of the growth it had before, and this likely shows the Dacian, Daco-Celtic conquest and Germanic invasion of Eastern Europe.

The Illyrians were defeated and largely integrated by 200 BC, finally about 160 BC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyrian_Wars

The Dacian wars were 200-300 years later:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan's_Dacian_Wars

That's exactly when J-L283 goes down first - and E-V13 too, somewhat, but then the biggest blow for E-V13 is right in the era of the Dacian wars. Hardly a coincidence, it just fits so nicely.

Click to expand...

Archetype0ne said:

"Before 100 AD the general haplogroups (not Albanian specific) are very weakly to not at all correlated. In fact, they are even contradictory, like when J-L283 expanded E-V13 goes down and vice versa, same for R-PF7563, R-CTS9219."

Biggest cap.

Are we looking at the same data here? Like what?
When even one owns data contradicts their claims. C'mon are we supposed not to look at the data and just at the wall of text?

Click to expand...

mount123 said:

Can you please elaborate what you mean by that?

Click to expand...

Archetype0ne said:

Funnily enough the bolded part is the very cap here.
I would give you the benefit of the doubt if we started talking about different time frames in reference to lagging and leading indicators vis a vis the two haplogroup diversification patterns. But even then lagging and leading still implies correlation.

Edit: Placeholder. pending

Click to expand...

Archetype0ne said:

What is there to elaborate though? Do I need to draw arrows pointing at the correlated moves on the graph? Be them lagging or leading correlations? Just look at the general pattern. I have not done stats in a couple* of years, but you go ahead and run the numbers for correlation between the data and you will see.

Even then I am giving this particular method tooo much merit. The whole point of Y mutations is randomness, trying to measure degree of correlation in such a scenario beyond the general pattern that gets tricky. But even then its still staggering just from the eye test.

Click to expand...

Riverman said:

Why does it align for so many events and people nicely, but here we see a massive contradiction?

The best you could argue for is that E-V13 and J-L283 were both in the more Southern Balkans, but only E-V13 got nearly erradicated (why the difference?), while the more Northern clades stayed well and alive for yet another 200 years to the Dacian wars and Germanic invasion of the Carpathians-Western steppe.

Again, E-V13 goes down from a fairly important, steadily growing haplogroup of Europe to nothing in the Roman period, whereas J-L283 got hit too, but 200 years earlier and growing well right when E-V13 doing bad, while the Carpathian zone/Dacians get ravaged. This would be a lot of coincidences to say the least.

This is how synchrony looks like for Germanics (starts with Urnfieldisation):

I-M253 are in complete synchrony between 3.100-2.000 BP.

Slavic being split along two major branches of R-Z280, one expanding with R-M458, the other with I-CTS10936. Note how the up and downturns for the respective main founding lineages of Germanics and Slavs are nicely in synchrony.

Then consider the much smaller area, much less diversified, for J-L283, and look at the truly massive discrepancy. I'm not saying I know the answer, but that's surely absolutely significant. J-L283 grew with Romans, E-V13 almost completely crashed, E-V13 grew better with Germanics and Slavs, J-L283 rather not.

And the zero growth in the Roman era means the conditions for the J-L283 lineages must have been very different, significantly better, in the Roman sphere. If you think about it, we won't see anything different, because we might find a lot more clades which expanded with Dacians, Celts, Germanics and Slavs elsewhere, but so much more Albanian E-V13 subclades in that time frame? After that good testing of Albanians on YFull? Rather not.

You have to explain the discrepancy. Probably you have a better/other explanation than Thracians and Dacians suffer more than Southern Illyrians, but I would prefer to discuss alternative explanations or additional data instead of criticism as such.

Its a crude and probably not "scientific enough" method, but its good enough to detect and describe major events and population movements, like those of the Germanics and Slavs. So it has to mean something for the Balkan lineages as well.

I'm just applying the same crude method to all lineages I'm interested in. Its not to "manipulate the data" for any kind of purpose. I just tried to visualise with actual data what I did recognise as a pattern on YFull already, that most E-V13 lineages have specific founding periods, most dating back to the LBA-EIA.

Click to expand...