I have my ethnicity in my profile, man. I'm Polish from Lithuania - like these guys:
Albanians AFAIK are primarily Europid, so yes - they are of the same race as you and me.
Maybe they have a different "sub-race", but race is the same.
I know personally only one Albanian guy, so I can't tell you much about Albanians. But it seems to me that Albanians are more swarthy than most Slavs and Balts (well, certainly that one was), even than Southern Slavs. Southern Slavs today - especially South-Eastern ones - are darker than their ancestors 1000 years ago. You might want to check my thread from The Apricity Forums (my nick on that forum is Litvin), "Early Slavic phenotypes":
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?134398-Early-Slavic-phenotypes-(6th-10th-centuries)
When it comes to South Slavs - I find Slovenes & Croats most similar in appearance to Poles. Bulgarians are most different in appearance.
So what ???
The last person who spoke Prussian* died after 1711, but German dialects spoken in Prussia were called "Prussian" already long before that.
*One of Baltic languages, related to Lithuanian and Latvian.
It was called Ragussa but it was Slavicized centuries ago and therefore plenty of things there are Slavic. For example the main Croat Baroque poet was from that place, and he wrote an epic Pan-Slavic poem "Osman" which was about Polish-Cossack victory over Turks at Khotyn in 1621:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khotyn_(1621)
How could Croats build anything in Ancient Era, if Croats migrated to the Balkans from the north during the 7th century ???
They migrated from so called "White Croatia", which was somewhere at the Carpathian Mountains - could be in Southern Poland.
De Administrando Imperio by Constantine VII Porphyrogennetosdescribes how Slavs - Croats - captured Dalmatia:
"(...) Therefore everyone, who would like to do research about Dalmatia, can read herein about the way how the Slavic peoples took it. The Croats with their families came to Dalmatia and found the Avars in possesson of that land. After fighting against each other for some time, the Croats defeated the Avars, partially murdered them and partially forced them to submissiveness. Since that moment the country was seized by the Croats. (...)"
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Some selected quotes from ancient sources which describe Slavic invasions of the Balkans during the 6th and the 7th centuries:
Procopius, Book VII, XIII - describing events in year 545 AD:
"(...) For a great throng of the barbarians, the Sclaveni, had, as it happened, recently crossed the Ister, plundering the adjoining country and these Sclaveni enslaved a very great number of Romans. (...)"
Procopius of Caesarea:
"(...) In Illyria and Thracia, from the Ionian Gulf to Byzantine surrounding cities, where Hellas and Chersonese regions are situated, (...) the Sklavenes and the Antes, penetrating practically every year since Justinian administering the Roman Empire, were inflicting irreversible damage to their inhabitants. In each invasion I estimate 200,000 Romans were either took as prisoners or killed (...)"
Procopius about Roman attempts to stop the Slavic invasion:
"(...) the Empire wasn't able to find just one only man brave enough to undertake this task. (...)"
Pope Gregory I in a letter to Exarch of Italy from year 599:
"(...) It deeply afflicts and disquiets me the Slavic nation that menace us. It afflicts me from what I already suffer from you, it disquiets me because they have already started to penetrate into the Italic peninsula through Istria. (...)"
And according to
Priscus of Panium, in 610 Slavic tribes flooded into Greece.
Procopius of Caesarea:
"(...) Nay further, they [the Slavs] do not differ at all from one another in appearance. For they are all exceptionally tall and stalwart men, while their bodies and hair are neither very fair or blond, nor indeed do they incline entirely to the dark type (...)"
Procopius of Caesarea:
"(...) In more or less the same time [549 - 550] a Slavic army (...) gathered itself together and after crossing without encountering any resistance from anyone the river Ister [Danube], and later with similar ease the river Heuros, it divided itself for two parts. (...) Commanders of Roman garrisons in Illyria and Thrace fought against both those parts and even though they had already separated from each other, the Romans suffered - contrary to their expectations - a defeat, and some of them fell dead on the spot, while others found salvation in escaping. (...) After all garrisons had suffered such defeats at the hands of either one or the other one of barbarian armies, one of enemy bands fought against troops of Asbados. He was a member of Emperor Justinian's personal guard (...) and he led a numerous and elite force of cavalry, which had been garrisoned for a long time inside the Thracian stronghold of Tdzurulon. But also they were forced to retreat by the Slavs and most of them, shamefully escaping, got slaughtered, while Asbados himself was captured and temporarily left alive, but soon after that the Slavs skinned him alive and threw him into a burning campfire. After that the Slavs were plundering all neighbouring Thracian and Illyrian lands without any obstacles and both of their two units captured many strongholds. (...) And those who had defeated Asbados, later plundered in turn everything up to the sea coast, and captured in an assault the coastal city of Toperus (...) And they slaughtered 25,000 men, plundered everything, and enslaved all the children and all the women. (...)"
John of Ephesus:
"(...) In third year after the death of Emperor Justin, during the reign of victorious Tiberius, the damned nation of the Slavs has risen, and marching through entire Hellas, through lands of Thessaly and Thrace, captured many cities and strongholds, plundered, burned and robbed, seized the land and settled there with full ease, without fear, like in their own land. (...) they were plundering the country, burning it and robbing, as far as the Great Walls [of Constantinople], and this is how they captured many thousands of cattle, as well as many other kinds of booty. (...) Until today, that is until year 584, they still continue to live in peace in lands of the Rhomaioi, without fear and concern, plundering, murdering and burning, getting rich and highjacking gold and silver, capturing horses and plenty of weapons; and they have learned to fight better than the Rhomaioi. (...)"
Menander Protector:
"(...) About the fourth year of the reign of Caesar Tiberius Constantine, some hundred thousand Slavs broke into Thrace, and pillaged that and many other regions. As Greece was being laid waste by the Slavs, with trouble liable to flare up anywhere, and as Tiberius had at his disposal by no means sufficient forces, he sent a delegation to the Khagan of the Avars. (...)"
Strategikon of Maurice:
"(...) They do not keep prisoners in perpetual slavery like other peoples, but they demarcate for them a limited period of time, after which they give them a choice: they can return home after purchasing their freedom, or stay among them as free people and friends. (...)"
Jordanes:
"(...) These people, as we started to say at the beginning of our account or catalogue of nations, though off-shoots from one stock, have now three names, that is, Venedi, Antes and Sclaveni. (...) they now rage in war far and wide, in punishment for our sins (...) Though their names are now dispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly called Sclaveni and Antes. (...)"
Procopius of Caesarea:
"(...) Belisarius was eager to capture alive one of the men of note among the enemy, in order that he might learn what the reason might be why the barbarians were holding out in their desperate situation. And Valerian promised readily to perform such a service for him. For there were some men in his command, he said, from the nation of the Sklaveni, who are accustomed to conceal themselves behind a small rock or any bush which may happen to be near and pounce upon an enemy. In fact, they are constantly practising this in their native haunts along the river Ister, both on the Romans and on the barbarians as well. (...)"
Procopius, Book V, XXVII, 134:
"(...) This exploit, then, was accomplished by the Goths on the third day after they were repulsed in the assault on the wall. But twenty days after the city and harbor of Portus were captured, Martinus and Valerian arrived, bringing with them sixteen hundred horsemen, the most of whom were Huns and Sclaveni and Antae, who are settled above the Ister River not far from its banks. (...)"
De Administrando Imperio:
"(...) Therefore everyone, who would like to do research about Dalmatia, can read herein about the way how the Slavic peoples took it. The Croats with their families came to Dalmatia and found the Avars in possesson of that land. After fighting against each other for some time, the Croats defeated the Avars, partially murdered them and partially forced them to submissiveness. Since that moment the country was seized by the Croats. (...)"
And these are just a few examples out of many.
There are many more sources which write about Slavic invasions of the Balkans.
According to sources already in
547 AD Slavic tribes invaded as far as Durazzo (Dyrrachium / Durres).
Abraham ben Jacob (a 10th century Sephardic Jewish traveller from Muslim Spain):
"(...) Slavic countries extend from the Mediterranean Sea to the Northern Ocean. (...) Generally speaking, Slavs are warlike and violent, and if not their internal discord and lack of unity, no other nation would be able to match them in strength. (...)"
