Ike
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There is an idea and possibility that Illyrian might have not been one language or not even the same group of languages, and we're exploiting on that.He argues that Albanian is Satem and Illyrian is Centum and nobody cannot find continuity between them, these two languages are mutualy exclusive.
John Wilkes completely crashed Illyrian Albanian myth, he led research in Yugoslavia and Albania and basis on sceletal evidence he concluded that Albanians have no links with Illyrians
(after that and DNA evidence has confirmed his conclusions).
They don't have to be genetically related. If geography was just a bit different, whole Albania would be assimilated 10 centuries ago, and they would probably speak Bulgarian today. That doesn't mean they would be more blood related to Russians and other Slavs than they are now.
One thing we have is that if Illyrians did come from the North, current Albanian Y-DNA groups don't reflect what we know about central European genetic composition of that time. Albanians were obviously a very small group of people, and might have very easily been assimilated by Illyrians. If it's true they were there before Hellenes, then there's a reasonable chance they spoke pre-IE language, and that their current language was imposed by Illyrian (or Thracian, or whichever) majority. I'm simply dazzled that Albanian scientists are not already shoveling ancient skeletons trying to write off such a strong argument for genetic discontinuity with Illyrians, but are losing time writing same things over and again.