"Arbëresh"

It is known that prior to 5000 B.C. there was a certain word used by ancient peoples to describe the concepts of "height", "tallness" and, "elevation". This word was also sometimes used to describe things associated with "tall" or "high" such as trees, hills, slopes, and "lands above" others. It was also associated with the color of "white" and specifically the color of frost, ice and snow, those things frequently seen by people when at the highest elevations.

This "height" word was used before people had learned to write the sounds of their speech so, there is no precise record of the word. However, linguists have discovered enough remnants of this word still in modern languages to be able to trace its evolution back through time. With this evidence they have also been able to develop some hypothetical models of what they believe the word was like. One example is the Indo-European re-construction of *albho- which would closely represent the meaning of the modern English word: "white".

Traces of this ancient word can be seen in Latin, the mother of several modern languages:

arbor- "tree", "woods", "wood" (perhaps "oak trees") mirrored in albero (Italian); arbre (French); arbol (Spanish) and, arbore (Romanian).
alnus - "alder" tree.
altus - "above", "steep", "elevated", "high", "lofty" (sometimes: "far back", "ancient") with synonyms alto (Italian), haut (French), alto (Spanish) and ard (Irish).
ardus - "high", "steep".
alpes - "alpine", "Alps".
albus - "white"
alsius - "frost", "cold"

In ancient times it is also known that colors were often used to represent directions. Most often the word "white" indicated the general location of the sunrises and "black" the locations of sunsets. Many tribal groups who migrated across the vast steppes, the lowlands of Eurasia, used three colors to describe locations relative to the position of the sun above the endless horizontal plane. White was most often associated with the "east", black with "north" and, red with "south" (There was no fourth point on the ancient "compass").

Physical features on the landscape were also named with colors representing direction. Thus, the names of the Red, Black and White (Aegean) Seas; and many examples of "white-river", "red-river", "black-river" still exist on modern maps from this ancient naming convention (the Elbe, also known as "Albis" or "white-river" is an obvious example).

Tribal peoples named their own sub-groups with colors which designated their location or direction. Usually "white" and "black" to denote northern/southern or, eastern/western divisions of their tribal groups. Thus the White & Black divisions of the Sarmatians, Bulgars, Khazars, Tatars, Ugri and Cumanians, among others, who swept into Europe during the times of the great migrations.

However, in mountainous areas there was a different orientation for ancient peoples in respect to direction and location. The horizontal plane of the lowland prairies had little meaning for semi-nomadic pastoral peoples whose way of life was dictated by a dominant vertical dimension. The important directions were up and down, not east and west or, north and south.

The world of the ancient mountaineers began after leaving the shadowy darkness of the lowlands and, their lands rose upwards from there, to encompass all the heights of the white, snow-covered mountains above.

In about the Eleventh Century A.D. when a certain tribal peoples emerged out of their remote mountain homes of the western Balkans, and migrated into and through the lowland and coastal areas of the region, their names were first recorded on the pages of history as: "Albanians", "Albanians", "Arbënesh", "Arbëresh", "Arvanitios", and "Arnauts". Although it is unknown exactly how they all came to be known by such names, it is probably significant that they were initially identified, either by themselves or by others, using ancient root words, arb, alb and arv, etc., which reflected their origins as being the highest areas of the region. And, despite other theories and speculations, it is most likely that the true definition of these various names was directional, meaning "highlanders".

Deep and Ancient Roots

Our cultural heritage is deeply rooted along the spines of two mountain ranges on the western Balkan peninsula, the Dinaric and Pindus. The Dinaric begins near the modern city Trieste at the northern tip of the Adriatic Sea and runs southeast through all of former Yugoslavia into central Albania where it breaks off into an area of rugged foothills and high plains. Below this short transition zone, and starting In southern Albania, the Pindus range rises up sharply and covers the entire Ionian coastal area of Epiros in western Greece.

The Dinaric and Pindus mountains are totally unlike most others in Europe, because of their unique "folded" geologic formations. Neither system has any natural gaps or passages along their whole lengths to allow easy human access across them or, into their interiors. Each range is actually a series of four individual sub-ranges, running parallel, one behind the other, and averaging between 6-7,000 feet in elevation continiously, for hundreds of miles. This has made this entire western Balkan region a virtual citadel against outside influences throughout history. Some wide-ranging areas had not even been accurately surveyed or mapped as late as the 1950's. The highlands comprise about eighty-five percent or more of this area and, in places these mountains protrude right up to the coast of the Adriatic Sea, and then drop into it, in the form of sheer rock cliffs. The remaining coastal areas were dominated by wetlands, marshes and malarial swamps, until they were recently drained during the last couple of decades. Dense forests also once covered the foothills, adding to the foreboding, isolated and inacessable nature of the whole area, the most continiously remote region of all Europe.

The topgraphy of this area has dramatically shaped the way of life of all peoples who have inhabited it. The land has never supported widespread potential for agriculture so, the people who chose or, were forced, to live there became pastoral herders and livestock breeders. From pre-historic times onward, they have raised cattle, sheep, goats, horses and sometimes swine. Meat, milk and cheese have dominated their diet and, hides, leathers and wools provided their clothing. The nature of the mountains also shaped them to be semi-nomadic. There were two seasons in their year, summer and winter. Summer was the time for flocks and herds to be grazed and tended to in the fertile open highland pastures while winter was the time for protecting the animals from the elements in confined lowland pastures and pens while the mountains were covered with snow, ice and the bitter northern winds. The movement to the highlands took place in the Spring and, the trek back from the mountains occured in the Fall. The seasonal equinox, when the sun was seen to change from its winter path to summer path, and back again, were the celestal signs which signalled it was time to move.

The semi-annual movements up and down the mountains in the western Balkans have never been a small or isolated matter since the absolute majority of the population have always been semi-nomadic pastoralists. The Spring migration relatively depopulated the lowland areas and their arrival back in the fall swelled these areas with people again. Since the summer was the season of war and invasions and, armies normally travelled along natural passages such as rivers and valleys, there were usually sparce targets for plunder for any ouside raiders in the rural areas of the western Balkans.

The migrations in the Spring, in ancient times, were marked by celebrations and festivals honoring the rebirth of things from the dead. Cerimonial bonfires were lit and there were parades of people decorated in green leaves to honor the god Dionysos who symbolized this season of rebirth and fertility. Later, in Christian times, the great spring movements were preceded by the feast of St. George, the warrior saint and "rider of the green horse", every April 23. In the Fall, at the time of the return from the mountains, there were similar festivals centered on the ancient deity of Demeter, goddess of the dead and later, as the feast of St. Demeterus every October 8.

Our deepest roots are likely centered in the Dinaric range, in the area of today's northern Albania and the southern half of the former Yugoslavia. This is the area where the Greeks first recorded the existence of a people whom they called the Illyrians.

Greek legends say Illyrios, the son of Cadus and Harmonia was the person from whom all Illyrians were descended. Cadus was told by the oracle to go northwards from Boeotia and live with a people known as the Encheleians and become their king. After their son Illyrios was born a snake came and wound itself around the baby's body and imparted mystical powers to him. Later, his mother and father were both turned into serpents and cast out to live in the fields.
The Greek word: "Ilir" meaning "to turn" or "to wind", is thought to be the origin of the name Illyrios, and thus also, Illyrian. In historical times Encheleians were one of the southernmost Illyrian tribes, one of the first encountered by the Greeks. Their lands were centered near Lake Ohrid (on today's border of Albania and Macedonia), after a southward migration in earlier times. The tribal name "Encheleae" stems from the Greek word for "eel" (which was actually more akin to "serpent" in those times), and means "eel-people". The Encheleae are known to have worshiped snakes and decorated their shields with images of serpents.

The content of this legend strongly suggests to some scholars that the Greeks coined the term "Illyrian" based only on their early knowledge of the Encheleae tribe. The term was likely applied it to all similar tribes in the Dinarics they encountered later. It is doubtful the Illyrians ever used this term to actually identify themselves, prior to late Roman times. This is because the Illyrians were not a unified civilization or culture and rarely more than a loose political entity as a people. Rather, they were autonomous tribes and sometimes tribal confederations. Even though they were known to have shared many common cultural traits, which identified them to outsiders as Illyrians, it appears the cultural differences from tribe to tribe were extreme enough for them see themselves as each being distinct tribal-nations or kingdoms. It also appears inter-tribal warfare was more common than inter-tribal confederations.

There were over seventy major "Illyrian" tribes and several minor ones. Surviving records indicate how some of these tribes were organized. Each tribe contained usually three or four "brotherhoods" of about twelve or thirteen clans each. Each clan numbered about 150-200 warriors and their associated families. The leaders of each brotherhood also formed the membership a tribal council. The brotherhoods seemed to control certain geographic areas and the authority to re-apportion the land and other properties within it to their own clans. One of these brotherhoods is said to have redistributed property on a regular basis, every eighth year. However, it is believed there were probably wide variations in tribal organization and sizes thoughout the Illyrian lands.

The Mysterious Illyrians

Between 8000-6000 B.C. was the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) in the Balkans. People survived by hunting, fishing and food gathering. From 6000 and 4000 B.C., during the Neolithic ("New Stone Age") agriculture spread northwards to the banks of the Danube river. This Mediterranean agricultural people raised cereals duch as wheat, beans and barley, and bred livestock, cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. Tools and weapons were still made of stone and the tribes were almost totally matriarchial in social structure and the worship was of female mother-earth goddesses, and the mystery of birth growth and fertility.

About 4000- 3500 B.C. new people began to make intrusions into the Balkans from somewhere north of the Black Sea, in central Asia. They were fast moving Indo-European nomads and they brought radical changes such as . new technology, in the form of bronze metal working for tools and weapons, the wheel and the domesticated horse for transporation. Their social structure was patriarchal and their religion focused on male-warrior sky gods and warrior cults of the wolf and horse. They assimulated or were assimulated by the existing settled Mediterranean agricultural propulations of the Balkans (Pelasgians?) and began to emerge as separate and identifiable cultural groups for the first time in this new era called the Bronze Age.
Archealogists have identifed the Illyrians of the Dinaric mountains as one of the original Bronze Age cultures to emerge in the Balkans, along with their neighbors the Thracians, Moesians and Dacians. Scholars feel the cultural development of the Illyrians was extremely slow, fragmented and uneven, because of their isolation, which apparently resulted in the great diversity and independence of the tribes who finally emerged from the Bronze-age.

About a thousand years after the formation of these original Balkan cultures another new people, the ancestors of the Greeks, arrived in the Balkans. These Greek-speakers moved in from the east and pushed southwards, through Thrace and Moesia, bypassing the Dinarics. These Greek-speakers mixed with the rural agricultural peoples (Pelasgians?) in the north and interior areas and then with some Aegen coastal peoples in the more southern areas. In the north and interior agricultural regions the Greek-‘Pelasgian' combination is thought to have produced later the "Dorian" and other northern Greek cultural groups. In the south, the Greek-Aegean Coastal mixture produced a powerful maritime trading civilization called the Mycean (centered in the Peloponnese of southern Greece). The Aegean peoples, found by the Greeks, in the south are thought to have been heavily influenced by earlier Persian/Egyptian and Phonecian civilizations and their social organizations (which also probably produced the nearby Mionian civilization on the island of Crete, which the Myceans soon absorbed).

About 1200 B.C. the Myceans along with many other advanced and dominate Mediterranean civilizations were devastated by an apparent general and concurrent uprising by "rural peoples" who had gained enough new iron technology and military techniques to be able to throw off the domination of more advanced city-state civilizations. Shortly after this time, there were large general population movements and disruptions throughout Europe which brought another wave of new cultures, this time from the north, into the area of the Balkans which may have, in turn, pushing the Hellenes or "northern Greeks" southwards. Many of the former Myceans fled into Attica to the protection of Athens, and later to Anitolia (modern Turkey) and Syria as well as the islands of the eastern Aegean.

legends of some of the Illyrian tribes being descended in some way from the Trojans, in both Greek and Illyrian mythology. The Dardanian tribe of the Kosovo plain, just northeast of Albania and the northern Illyrian Veniti (later, the founders of Venice, in Italy) both, for example, had this tradition of Trojan ancestory. This is strange, considering that archealogical evidence shows an opposite movement of peoples, from the Balkans eastward into Anitolia (today's Turkey and Armenia), not too long before the sack of Troy. In fact, the tribes of the Phrygians and Armenians, who displaced the Hittites from that area, are now thought to have originally been either Thracians, Moesians or Illyrians, or a combination of some or all of these peoples.

The Illyrians have been a great mystery to most scholars for centuries, probably because only a few detailed scientific facts were known about them until recently and, the existing historical records concerning them were vague or incomplete. This lack of knowledge put them at the heart of many fantastic theories and speculations, many of which have been recently discarded because of new archealogical evidence combined with better and more objective historical analysis. However, even some of the new and more objective proposals about them seem no less interesting or fantastic. For example, some Balkan and Italian archealogists have now both proposed that "an Illyrian migration" into Apulia, on the ‘heel' of Italy, between 1300-1200 B.C. resulted in the Messapic culture there, and that later these same people also migrated to Sicily. They have gone as far as to classify the ‘native' Sicans and Sicels, who lent their name to the island, as being of actual "Illyrian" origin. Some Russian scholars also, for example, have proposed that an Illyian tribe called the Neuri, who migrated northwards in the 6th century B.C. past the Gaete River, as being the ancestors of a certain people, later to be called the Slavs, who originated in that same area. Of course, the critical question is how precisely can they define what is actully "Illyrian" in light of all the diversity that has been found of the people grouped under that label?

The Greeks claimed the Illyrians occupied all the lands beyond Epirus and Thrace, up to the Danube-Drava river line. This was a huge area and, although the majority of it was mountainous and pastoral, it also contained significant agricultural and coastal areas as well on its northern and western peremiters, respectively. In actual fact, it appears there were many Illyrian sub-cultures within this defined area, with many being much less Illyrian than more.

In early times the northern areas seem to have been Italo-Illyrian; Celto-Illyrian; and Daco-Illyian. To the east, Thraco-Illyian. To the south, Epriot-Illyrian or, perhaps even Pelasgian-Illyrian. In the late Bronze-age there may have been a pressure from the north or an expansion out of the mountains which pushed some Illyrians further east into Thrace or, even into Anitolia; also southwards for a ways into both northern Eprius and Thessaly and, westwards across the Adritiac to Italy.

About 500 years later, as Greece emerged from the dark ages, the Greek influence began to spread northwards along the Adriatic coast and the eastern mainland through Thessaly and into Epirus. Around this same time the Macedoneans, orignally a ‘Doric' tribe also apparently emerged as a separate identifiable people in the gap between the Pindus and Dinaric ranges (in central Albania) and moved eastwards to displace some existing Thracian and Illyrian tribes living along the Thermaic Gulf. The Macedoneans soon developed into a stong poltical power who often faced-off against their Illyrian neighbors.

The first Greek settlement in Illyrian lands took place when the Corinthins established a trading post on the island of Corfu in 733 B.C. off the coast of today's southern Albania. A second Corinthian trading post was established a hundred years later, about 630 B.C. farther north and on the coast of the mainland, in an area called Dyrrhachium. It was known first as Epidamnus and is today's modern Albanian port city of Durres. In 588 B.C. a third post, called Glyaceia, was established on the Illyrian-Epriot frontier to the south, it was later renamed Apollonia, in honor of the Greek god Apollo. During the following centuries, these outposts would grow into flourishing cities facilitating trade between Greece and Italy by sea and, also overland with the Balkans and Danube basin. Very little is recorded about the relationships between the Greeks and Illyians and Epriots at these trading posts during their early years however, it does appear that the Greek post in Epidamnus took on a distinct "Illyrian character" over time, rather than the other way around.

The first detailed record of Greek contact with Illyrians was in 421 B.C., as recorded by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War. He tells of a Spartan army who encountered a group of Illyrian mercenaries and were so unnerved by their first sight of these people, "by their warlike nature" and loud battle cries, that they quickly retreated. Thucydides then goes on to relate the often quoted speech given by Spartan commander to help calm his troops and rebuild their courage.

In 393 B.C. the Illyrians invaded and plundered Macedonia, then ruled by Amyntas III, grandfather of Alexander the Great. They raided Macedonia again in 384 B.C. and in the following year also attacked the Molossian tribes in Epirus. This was the start of an era of continuious warfare in the area involving the Illyrians against various foes, especially the Macedonians.

In 359 B.C. the Illyrians inflicted a crushing defeat on an invading Macedonean army sent by Phillip II. However, Phillip invaded again in 344 B.C. and captured and devestated a large amount of the Illyrian lands, which seems to have settled down the fighting for almost a decade. But, when Phillip died in 336 and left the Macedonean kingdom to his son Alexander, the Illyrians mobilized their armies, thinking to take advantage of the new young ruler. They tried to join forces with the Thracians who were also mobilizing but Alexander was able to defeat two major Illyrian tribal armies at Pelion, near Lake Orhid to defuse the threat. Later, when Alexander was preparing to march eastwards for his planned conquest of Persia, he decided to heavily garrison the area bordering the Illyrian lands prior to his departure

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