Illyrian and Albanian - a linguistic approach

[Johane Derite]

More evidence that the Dorians were originally an Illyrian tribe

also this

 

[Johane Derite]

In Greek mythology, Perrhaebi seem to have been considered Illyrians:

"I am Pelasgus, offspring of Palaechthon, whom the earth brought forth, and lord of this land; and after me, their king, is rightly named the race of the Pelasgi, who harvest the land. Of all the region through which the pure Strymon flows, on the side toward the setting sun, I am the lord.There lies within the limits of my rule the land of the Perrhaebi, the parts beyond Pindus close to the Paeonians, and the mountain ridge of Doddana; the edge of the watery sea borders my kingdom. I rule up to these boundaries."

(The King of Argos,The Suppliants, 490 BC, translated by E.D.A. Morshead)

Its indicated that the land of Perrhaebi, inhabited by Pelasgi, extends beyond Pindus close to the Paeonians.

In Greek mythology Perrhaebus, eponymous ancestor of Perrhaebi, was son of Illyrius, as were Encheleus, Autarieus, Dardanus, Maedus, and Taulas. From these, sprang the Taulanti, Parthini, Dardani, Encheleae, Autariates, Dassaretae and the Daors.

Autareius had a son Pannonius or Paeon and these had sons Scordiscus and Triballus.

Of interest here is the reference to Perrhaebi, situated south of the Macedonians, are considered amongst the most ancient tribes of Thessaly.

 

[bigsnake49]

In Greek mythology, Perrhaebi seem to have been considered Illyrians:

"I am Pelasgus, offspring of Palaechthon, whom the earth brought forth, and lord of this land; and after me, their king, is rightly named the race of the Pelasgi, who harvest the land. Of all the region through which the pure Strymon flows, on the side toward the setting sun, I am the lord.There lies within the limits of my rule the land of the Perrhaebi, the parts beyond Pindus close to the Paeonians, and the mountain ridge of Doddana; the edge of the watery sea borders my kingdom. I rule up to these boundaries."

(The King of Argos,The Suppliants, 490 BC, translated by E.D.A. Morshead)

Its indicated that the land of Perrhaebi, inhabited by Pelasgi, extends beyond Pindus close to the Paeonians.

In Greek mythology Perrhaebus, eponymous ancestor of Perrhaebi, was son of Illyrius, as were Encheleus, Autarieus, Dardanus, Maedus, and Taulas. From these, sprang the Taulanti, Parthini, Dardani, Encheleae, Autariates, Dassaretae and the Daors.

Autareius had a son Pannonius or Paeon and these had sons Scordiscus and Triballus.

Of interest here is the reference to Perrhaebi, situated south of the Macedonians, are considered amongst the most ancient tribes of Thessaly.

Paionia is no where near Thessaly.

 

[Johane Derite]

Dardanian Plant Names by Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak


"Such a twofold development of the long vowel *ā is observed in Albanian and Lithuanian"

 

[Johane Derite]

Example of survival of Dardanian motifs among Albanian folkloric material. Much of the Albanian folkloric culture retains motifs and aspects that descend directly from Paleo-Balkan culture.


Unfortunately, most ancient artifacts are in the possession of neighbouring states that have plundered during respective occupations.


Many aren't even declared.

 

[mihaitzateo]

A small observation:
Current language spoken by Albanians is a Satem language and rather closed to Balto-Slavic and Slavic languages.
Current Albanians Autosomal DNA is very close to Central Italians from Tuscany.
So, maybe the ancient Illyrians language was more Centum and less Satem and current Albanian is modified, from ancient Albanian language, due to various influences.
I think nobody denies that the Albanians are partially related to ancient Illyrians, as genetics , but the language was changed, for sure and it also has some few Germanic influences besides the significant BaltoSlavic and Slavic influences.
There are also some Greek influences in the Albanian language and according to the DNA Testing, Illyrians were rather from the group of people with Thracians and Romans, not with ancient Greeks.
To what degree the ancient Illyrian language was changed, we cannot know.
But I doubt that the Illyrians were speaking a Satem language.

 

[Johane Derite]

Dardanian and Moesian Royal Belts.
500 - 400 BC.


1100 years before Slavs entered the balkans, Dardanians lived around the Kosovo region, and Moesians around Central/Upper Serbia.


Cambridge & Oxford historian Sir Noel Malcolm argues Dardanians are ancestors of Kosovo Albanians.

 

[Johane Derite]

Today.~3200 years ago is the most accepted date for the fall of Troy according to ancient sources.

 

[Johane Derite]

[FONT=&quot]Antonio Baldacci, Italian ethnographer, political scientist, geographer, and botanist: "The writing of Albanian was explicitly prohibited by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, under threat of excommunication."

[/FONT]

 

[LABERIA]

Antonio Baldacci, Italian ethnographer, political scientist, geographer, and botanist: "The writing of Albanian was explicitly prohibited by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, under threat of excommunication."

THE ALBANIANS
There is an air almost European about the town of Koritza.
The energy and virility of the Albanian character seem somehow to have found a half- expression. Yet a Greek Bishop and a Turkish Pasha, aliens both of them, still
claim the allegiance of the town, though confronted by a spirit of the soil which both dread and both persecute — a spirit that is busily knitting a new people
together, in spite of all their efforts. If the secret thought in the august hearts of these twoofficials could be bared to the world, it would deserve to rankamong the rarest curiosities of officialdom. They have onemaster passion, the Bishop and the Pasha, and when they have finished praying for each other's destruction in their daily secret devotions, i suspect that a fervent little clause in Greek and in Turkish is addressed in much the same phraseology to Allah and the Trinity. And that is a prayer for the destruction of a spelling-book. They look upon that spelling-book much as Zeus regarded the torches of Prometheus...

...I had just been paying a formal call on the Bishop, who had explained to me how, ever since he had been Secretary to the Ecumenical Patriarch, his hard-won leisure had been spent in ceaseless efforts to promote a union between the Anglican and the Greek Church. In business hours he had sterner work. He occupied himself in excommunicating the parents of all the children who dared to attend the Protestant school where that spelling-book is harboured. It seemed an odd way of promoting the union of Protestantism and Orthodoxy. As for the Pasha, he had lately sent the chief of police to hunt for seditious books, and only a peremptory telegram from one of the consulates in Monastir had availed to save the alphabet.
The history of that spelling-book is the record of the one hopeful movement which gives a promise of enlightenment to the Albania of the future.
There were no doubt schools in such centres as Jannina, Berat, Koritza, and Elbasan, but i they belonged to the Orthodox Church, and their whole ( instruction was in Greek). They taught the young Albanian that he was a Greek, that he must speak Greek, and that his mother-tongue was only a nursery dialect for children, or a barbarous patois for " Turks." As for the Muslims, school hardly entered into their notions. The Turkish conceptionof a school was a place where little boys squatted upon the ground, and recited the Koran by heart...

...The first Albanian book that was ever printed was an " Imitatio Christi," published in Venice in 1626. A Catholic Bishop of Uskub, by name Bogdanes, did much for the language. He used the Latin alphabet, and a few copies of his works are still extant. He had a more enterprising successor towards the end of the eighteenth century, an Orthodox teacher named Theodore, who lived in Elbasan. He was the first pioneer to attempt a serious study of the language, and his "Lexicon Tetraglosson " (Latin, Greek, Vlach, Albanian) displays a real originality, since it claims for Albanian a place among the languages of Europe.
Clearly Theodore was a Pioneer born out of due time. It was a dangerous thing in those days to play with letters in Albania. Some fifty years later another Southern Albanian, Naum Veqilharxhi , took up Theodore's task, and worked out mother alphabet. It made some progress in the districts around Koritza, and a few little booklets were printed in it. But by this time the jealousies of the Greek clergy were aroused, and it is generally believed among albanian patriots that Naoum, who was so reckless as to mitrust himself during an illness to the Greek hospital at Constantinople, was poisoned by order of the Patriarch. I repeat the story because it is interesting to note that the efforts of the Albanians to throw the ignorance of the centuries had already roused the hostility of the Orthodox Church. As yet the movement was in its infancy, and could be checked by the untimely deaths of its leaders.

...Meanwhile the Catholic clergy in the North were by no means idle. The Jesuits issued a number of books, mostly, however, legends of the Saints, which can have had no particular educative value. A religious periodical was also published by them in Scutari. The happiest event for the Albanian language was the translation of the Bible by Constantine Christophorides (whose intellect has been quickened by an intimate association with the scholarly traveller. Von Hahn), under the auspices of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
It was issued at first in two alphabets, more or less modified to suit the peculiar phonetics of the Albanian language in Greek characters for the South, in Latin for the North. These early editions, however, found small favour, but between the years 1877-9 a Committee of Albanian patriots, most of them moslems, sat in Constantinople and elaborated yet another alphabet, mainly Latin, with an admixture of Greek characters. This was at length adopted by the Bible Society, and their Albanian colporteurs were set to work to sell it. They are to this day persecuted alike by the Greek Church and by the Turks. Every journey they undertake is an adventure. Their families are boycotted and excommunicated by the Orthodox priesthood they themselves are frequently imprisoned by the Turks. The work of the Constantinople Commission soon attracted the notice of the Turkish Government, and it had perforce to remove itself to a free centre. It settled in Bucharest and established a printing press of its own, from which about fifty books have been issued, including a Grammar, a Life of Skanderbeg, a popular history of Albania, and a number of translations. Albanian periodicals are issued in Bucharest, in Sofia, in Rome, and in London, but comparatively few copies find their way into Turkey...

...To keep Albania savage and ignorant is a fundamental principle of Abdul Hamid's statescraft. Macedonia is covered with schools which disseminate the views of every conceivable racial propaganda. There are Greek schools to Hellenise Vlachs and Slavs and Albanians. There are Bulgarian schools which maintain the schism within the Orthodox Church. There are Servian schools to split the Slav element. There are Roumanian schools to detach the Vlachs from the Hellenic interest. On all of these the Porte smiles with an indifferent and capricious favour. The more schools there are and the more propagandas, the less fear is there of a coalition among the Christians against he Turkish yoke. For all of these there is a contemptuous tolerance. They are part of the hereditary Ottoman tradition of dividing to conquer. But Albanian schools fall under a very different category. In them the Turks have seen a force making not for discord, but for unity. The Albanians, divided in religion, have only their language in common, and in the cult of that language lies the hope of the reunion of Moslem and Christian. The Albanian movement, nationalist like all the others, differed from them in seeking its rallying-point not in a religious but in a secular propaganda...

...Indeed, the surprising thing is that Albanian schools ever came to be established at all. In 1884, however, the Albanian Society, which was busied in publishing its booklets and periodicals in Bucharest, contrived to open a secondary school for boys in Koritza. It had on an average about sixty pupils, who came from both Moslem and Christian families, while the teachers belonged to the Orthodox rite. Its success among the Christians, however, was limited, because from the first it was subjected to the systematic persecution of the Greek clergy. The reading of anathemas against it soon became a regular part of the ritual in the Greek cathedral. Its teachers were steadily boycotted. But even these methods proved ineffective, and ultimately the Greeks found it necessary to denounce the two principal Albanian teachers as traitors who were conspiring against the Sultan. Their efforts went unheeded for some years, since the war of 1897 had left the whole Greek race under a cloud. But in 1902 the teachers, two brothers named Naoum and Leonidas Natcha, were arrested, and still languish untried in prison. The school, as i saw it, is a wrecked and dismantled shell, its garden overgrown with weeds, and its class-rooms littered with the stones which the apostles of Hellenism and culture cast through its broken windows as they go arrogantly by. Another interesting experiment still survives in a maimed form. In 1889 an Albanian Protestant School for girls and young boys was started under the auspices of the American Mission by Mr. Gerassimo Kyrias, an able and devoted man who did much in a short life for his language and the cause. Like so many of the pioneers of the movement, he came to an untimely end. He was captured by brigands, and dragged about by them for the best part of a year, while his friends collected an exorbitant ransom. The exposure, the privation, and the wanton cruelty to which he was subjected during this experience practically killed him, and he died soon after his release. The school is carried on by his sister, a graduate of Robert College. For four years it thrived and was much patronised by the Moslem gentry of Koritza. But its success in due course aroused the suspicions of the authorities. It would never do to allow the next generation of the Mohamedan aristocracy to be brought up by mothers who had imbibed the idea of patriotism with a knowledge of their own tongue. It was given out that the father of any Mohamedan child attending the school would be sent immediately, and without trial, into lifelong exile.

Too many had gone that road before now a hapless poet whosewhole crime was to have published a version of the legend of Genevieve in the proscribed Albanian language, and again a generous and tolerant hey who had assisted the Koritza schools. The threat proved effective, and only the Christian scholars remained. With them the Greek clergy knew how to deal. There were the usual anathemas, excommunications, and boycotts, and in 1904 when I visited Koritza, Miss Kyrias found her pupils reduced to about twenty boarders, some of them Protestants, and most of them members of families whose homes lie beyond the immediate influence of the Bishop of Koritza. Her teaching is carried on as though it were a furtive and shameful practice, and her school, centre of high influences, model of order and sweetness and goodwill, would be more readily tolerated if it were a nest of vice and crime. At any moment the chief of police may come clanking into the courtyard, and more than once the brave woman who works there alone and unprotected has stood in her doorway and dared him to execute his threat of confiscating her books.
There are also the Catholic schools in the North, conducted by the Jesuits in Scutari, and one or two other of the larger Gheg centres. The Catholic clergy has done much for the Albanian language, but it conducts its schools on a definitely religious basis, which deprives them of any influence upon the Mohamedans, who form, after all, two- thirds of the population. They owe their immunity to the fact that they are under Austrian protection.
The same organisation which founded the Albanian boys' school in Koritza, opened schools at Pogradetz and in the Colonia district, but these also were closed mainly through the jealousy of the Greeks...

...Under the joint persecution of the Church and the State, the cult of the Albanian language has deepened and broadened into a patriotic movement at once nationalist and democratic....



Source:
Macedonia; its races and their future ([1906])
Author: Brailsford, Henry Noel, 1873-1958
https://archive.org/details/macedoniaitsrace00braiuoft


"Edhe Krishti ne na thënte
Unë jam grek, eni pas meje,
Do t'i themi pa mblidh mente,
Se shqiptari s'vjen pas teje..."

Petro Nini Luarasi

Petro Nini Luarasi (born 22 April 1864 in Luaras, Kolonjë, Albania, then Ottoman Empire, and died on 17 August 1911 in Ersekë, Kolonjë, Albania, then Ottoman Empire) was an Albanian rilindas activist, Christian orthodox priest, teacher and journalist. His father, Nini Petro Kostallari, had also been active in the Albanian National Revival as a publicist and teacher.
Between 1887-1893 Luarasi opened in Ersekë and in some villages of the Kolonjë District Albanian language schools. Luarasi's founding and promotion of Albanian schools in the Kolonjë area brought him into conflict with Philaretos, the Greek archbishop of Kastoria.^[3] In 1892 a circular letter was sent to the Kolonjë Orthodox Albanian population to dissuade ties between them and Luarasi with Philaretos referring to him as a "damned renegade" spreading "free masonry and Protestantism", while condemning his work with Albanian schooling and stating that the Albanian language "did not exist".^[3]
For his patriotic deeds, teaching of the Albanian language and social activism he was persecuted both by the Young Turks and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. He died poisoned by them on 17 August 1911.^{[6][7][9][10]}


"....I mallkuari dhe i shkishëruari Petro Luarasi , në bashkëpunim me propagandën protestante e masone, ka shkuar në fshatra të ndryshme të rrethit të Kolonjës, duke u premtuar emërimin e mësuesve shqiptarë për mësimin e shqipes, një gjuhë e cila nuk ekziston...Ata përhapin Dhiatën e Re, emisarë dhe libra të tjerë që janë kundër fesë sonë të shenjtë dhe që nëna e jonë, Kisha e madhe e Krishtit, ka kohë që i ka shkishëruar dhe djegur në turrën e druve... Shpallim se kushdo që ndikohet nga i mallkuari Petro Luarasi dhe shokët e tij, ose pranon mësues shqiptarë, do të shkishërohet nga i madhi Zot, do të marrë mallkimin e etërve të kishës, do ta zerë lebra e Gehazit dhe trupi i tij do të mbetet i patretur dhe do të përdhoset pas vdekjes..."

Filareti, kryepeshkopi grek i Kosturit më 20 shtator 1892

Google translation:

"... The cursed and excommunicated Petro Luarasi, in conjunction with Protestant propaganda and freemasons, has gone to various villages of the Colonia district, promising the appointment of Albanian teachers for learning Albanian, a language that does not exist ... They spread the New Testament, emissaries, and other books that are against our holy religion, and that our mother, the great Church of Christ, has long since excommunicated and burned on the wood poles ... We declare that anyone affected by the damned Petro Luarasi and his companions, or accepting Albanian teachers, will be excommunicated by the Great Lord, will take the curse of the church fathers, will garnish Gehazi's leprosy, and his body will remain undefiled and will be defiled after death ... "

Philaretos, the Greek archbishop of Kastoria on September 20, 1892

No other language or education in Europe has experienced such a martyrization: a five-century condemnation. Shortly, one terrifying statistic taken from “The History of Albanians”, of the French Serge Metais, published in 2006 in Paris, would be sufficient. The picture of the education is unbelievable. In 1887, in Albania there were three thousand schools. One thousand and two hundred of those were Turk public schools, equally as much Greek private schools, three hundred Bulgarian, Serbian and Vlach ones, and only one Albanian school, with Pandeli Sotiri as its headmaster!
So, nearly every language was allowed to be taught in “the tolerant empire”, except one: the Albanian language! And the story doesn’t end here. Four years later, Pandeli Sotiri is killed, the Albanian school is closed! This is the truth, which has not been clearly exposed to the Albanian people yet.

Ismail Kadare

​

 

[Johane Derite]

What is the connection between Palestine and Palasë, Albania?


What is the "Pelasgian" hypothesis?


Put shortly, it's the hypothesis that before Greek, a Satem-like branch of Indo European languages was spoken in the Balkans, of which Albanian is the sole survivor.

 

[Johane Derite]

Some very interesting ideas about the possibly pre-greek indo-european Dimini culture. These are some esteemed scientists / linguists who proposed a pre-Greek Satem-like IE language in SE-Europe:


AJ Van Windekens, Otto Haas, Wilhelm Brandenstein, Weriand Merlingen, Paul Kretschmer, Albert Carnoy, Vladimir Georgiev, Milan Budimir.


A fair critic of their work, Hester, rightly summarized that the situation is very unclear, but that these scholars nonetheless do seem to have discovered something, and that it is likely there was at least one IE language in SE Europe in the pre-greek period.


Paul Kretschmer in particular thought that the later intrusive culture from the Danube in Dimini belonged to this pre-greek IE language:


"The Danubian layer is archaeologically identified by Kretschmer with the culture of Dimini and the migrations that brought its northern elements to Greece. To it belong the "Protindogermanisch" words in Greek vocabulary and the majority of place names with the characteristic Pre-Greek suffixal efoments. It is connected with the ancient tradition about the Pelasgian autochthons. These Danubian Pelasgians were the bearers of the Protindogermanisch stratum as established before. Archaeologically this linguistic group can be identified, according to Kretschmer, with the people producing the so-called ribbon-ware (Bandkeramik). "


The early Neolithic town of Sesklo was destroyed and a settlement of the new cultural type was erected on its site. This later Neolithic culture in Greece is called Dimini after its most representative site. There are many indications that this new Neolithic type of culture was brought to Thessaly by immigrants from the north which left their former habitat somewhere in the Hungarian plains. Yet this view has not remained undisputed. Some archaeologists think that the new type developed organically from the Sesklo culture under a strong influence from the Cyclades and the Orient. Yet, the abrupt change, the warlike ethos suggested by the style of Dimini, and its numerous links with central Europe give much weight to the first explanation.


The culture of Dimini never covered the whole of Thessaly. A later phase of the Sesklo culture (Sub-Sesklo) coexisted with it. Sites
of the Dimini type have also been found in the north-eastern Peloponnesus. But there too they seem to have been rather isolated
among settlements of the older Neolithic type."


From Radoslav Katicic: Ancient Languages of the Balkans Pt 1.


*Note: Kretschmer named the pre-greek "pelasgian" language "proto-indogermanisch" but didn't mean Proto-Indo-European in the way we use it today. It was a terrible choice for a name for sure.

 

[Johane Derite]

In the late copper age, an intrusive culture from the north appears in the archaeological record of thessaly. Paul Kretschmer believed this culture belonged to a pre-greek IE language that is more colloquially known as "Pelasgian".

 

[Johane Derite]

Esteemed linguists that supported a pre-greek Satem-like IE language in the Balkans (IMAGE):

 

[Piro Ilir]

A small observation:
Current language spoken by Albanians is a Satem language and rather closed to Balto-Slavic and Slavic languages.
Current Albanians Autosomal DNA is very close to Central Italians from Tuscany.
So, maybe the ancient Illyrians language was more Centum and less Satem and current Albanian is modified, from ancient Albanian language, due to various influences.
I think nobody denies that the Albanians are partially related to ancient Illyrians, as genetics , but the language was changed, for sure and it also has some few Germanic influences besides the significant BaltoSlavic and Slavic influences.
There are also some Greek influences in the Albanian language and according to the DNA Testing, Illyrians were rather from the group of people with Thracians and Romans, not with ancient Greeks.
To what degree the ancient Illyrian language was changed, we cannot know.
But I doubt that the Illyrians were speaking a Satem language.

Most plausible, Illyrian, Phrygian, Armenian and others, were speakers of a centum IE language during the bronze age. It has changed probably during the iron age not later. I have read that even the Tracian language has changed during the iron age becoming a satem language. Closest Albanian relative of Albanian still spoken probably is Armenian. They differed somewhere no later than 1200 bce. It's the time when proto Armenians moved to Anatolia, along with Phrygians, known with the exonym of eastern Mushki people. The western Mushki were probably the Phrygians. While the Lydians where a mix of Luwians, Eteo Cretans and Proto Illyrians. Armenians and Albanians are related the same as Germanics with Italics.

The position of Lydian language is still not established. It doesn't looks clearly Anatolian.

Proto Armenian , Proto Illyrian and proto Phrygian are probably the same thing

 

[Piro Ilir]

Esteemed linguists that supported a pre-greek Satem-like IE language in the Balkans (IMAGE):

Even if there was some kind of that language, I bet it was a sort of proto Tracian. Ancient Hellenes recorded that when their ancestors settled the region , they did found there the Tracians.

These old authors had no relevant proves about history as we have today.

 

[Piro Ilir]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAAegQIBhAC&usg=AOvVaw3o4sPHRJUs3l4eW6y20T1N


My preferred one. The only word we have proven beyond any doubt, that it was Illyrian

 

[FBS]

My favorites:
Vidh (Vidasus latinized) - elm tree, preserved as toponyms as well such as te Vidhat, Kryevidh.
Thana - cornelian cherry plant/fruit, still preserved in its pure form
Bind (bindus latinised) - preserved in expressions as bind/je, përbindësh

and so on

 

[Piro Ilir]

also this

The myth on the origin of Dorians resembles to the one of Macedonian Royal house.

Heracleidaes were indeed not Dorians , but they joined the Dorians in their war against Mycenaeans and became the Royal house.

The myth'--

"Heracles, whom Zeus had originally intended to be ruler of Argos, Lacedaemon and Messenian Pylos, had been supplanted by the cunning of Hera, and his intended possessions had fallen into the hands of Eurystheus, king of Mycenae. After the death of Heracles, his children, after many wanderings, found refuge from Eurystheus at Athens. Eurystheus, on his demand for their surrender being refused, attacked Athens, but was defeated and slain. Hyllus and his brothers then invaded Peloponnesus, but after a year's stay were forced by a pestilence to quit. They withdrew to Thessaly, where Aegimius, the mythical ancestor of the Dorians, whom Heracles had assisted in war against the Lapithae, adopted Hyllus and made over to him a third part of his territory.
After the death of Aegimius, his two sons, Pamphylus and Dymas, voluntarily submitted to Hyllus (who was, according to the Dorian tradition in Herodotus V. 72, really an Achaean), who thus became ruler of the Dorians, the three branches of that race being named after these three heroes".

This means that Dorians the same as Macedonians weren't originally Mycenaean or Greek.
Probably proto Illyrians/Phrygians/Armenians moved over Greece, Anatolia, and other parts of Mediterranean basin. This is being proven by linguistics and genetics.
Albanian language the same as Phrygian and Armenian shows a late process of satemisation. Albanian language closest relative today is Armenian

 

[Johane Derite]

Albanian is the only surviving IE language that is neither Satem nor Centum. It should be more taken into account when analysing the IE situation, especially since its in the middleof Greece, Rome, Danube, etc all critical points for IE phenomenon.

?Thus, the three-way IE reconstructed voiced ~ voiceless ~ voiced aspirated system of obstruents has been reduced, as in many IE dialects, to a double opposition: voiced ~ voiceless; and the outcomes of the three dorsal series suggest that Albanian, like Luwian, may have originally retained this three-way opposition intact and therefore is neither centum nor satem, despite the clear satem-like outcome of its palatal dorsals in most instances.

The evidence for this is the palatalization of original PIE labiovelars, but not plain velars, before front vowels.?

B 2018 De Gruyter
?Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics