Minst 25 Natosoldater skadade i Kosovo (2023-05-29)

Furthermore, our Greek samples (and to a lesser degree, the Macedonians) share much higher numbers of common ancestors with Albanian speakers than with other neighbors, possibly due to smaller effects of the Slavic expansion in these populations. The Albanian language is a Indo-European language without other close relatives (Hamp, 1966) that persisted through periods when neighboring languages were strongly influenced by Latin or Greek. The “origin” of modern-day Albanians is contentious; it is argued for instance that they are descended in large part from the Illyrians (Wilkes, 1996) who populated the eastern side of the Adriatic sea and part of modern-day Salento (Italy) during Roman times. Our results are certainly consistent with this view, including the fact that Italians share more common ancestors with Albanian speakers than with other
15 populations

Haplogroup I is the oldest major haplogroup in Europe and in all probability the only one that originated there

Ena gruppen (serber) har en dokumenterad migration in till Balkan,

Nonetheless, it is argued that the overall evidence, based on the criterion of significant shared innovations, points to a particularly close connection between Albanian and Greek. It is further argued that this connection constitutes a subdivision within a discernible Palaeo-Balkanic subgroup that includes Messapic, Phrygian, and Armenian and possibly other fragmentarily known languages.

As noted above, our ultimate assessment treats Albanian and Greek as particularly close relatives within Indo-European. We find the number of innovations shared only by Albanian and Greek to be overwhelming, thus pointing compellingly to a Helleno-Albanian subgroup.

It connects Albanian even more to Greek than previously assumed.

Ultimately, though, as indicated, the preponderance of evidence favours a close connection between Albanian and Greek,Footnote21 possibly as a subset within a “Palaeo-Balkanic” group with Armenian and Greek, as well as Phrygian, Messapic, and other fragmentarily attested languages (see Figure 13.1). The Albanian–Greek connection that we argue for here is particularly interesting in the light of the computational phylogenetic study of the interrelationships among IE languages reported on in Reference Chang, Cathcart, Hall and GarrettChang et al. 2015. In that paper, starting with the same model and data set as earlier phylogenetic studies (especially Bouckaert et al. 2012, 2013), but with a key difference in that they “constrained eight ancient and medieval languages to be ancestral to thirty-nine modern descendants” to allow for greater accuracy, the authors develop an “analysis with modern languages from all IE subfamilies” (Reference Chang, Cathcart, Hall and GarrettChang et al. 2015: 199–200) in which Albanian, represented by Arvanitika and Tosk,Footnote22 ends up in their resulting tree diagram of IE relationships as being most closely connected to Greek. Different methods and different IE data sets and different assumptions can of course yield different results,Footnote23 but we take heart from the convergence of our more traditional qualitative assessment of Albanian’s closest relative and the computational quantitative assessment by Chang et al.

Due to the processes of Hellenization, Romanization and Slavicization in the region, the only modern descendants of Paleo-Balkan languages are Modern Greek—which is descended from Ancient Greek—and Albanian—which evolved from either Illyrian, Thracian, Dacian or another related tongue.[1][2][3]