Who were the first settlers on the Balkans?

I think this is a trolling question, I'm amazed to see people giving serious responses.

It is still a historically meaningless question.  One might as well ask, who was the first "European"?  Who was the first "non-African"?  Who was the first "human" - the latter question only inviting debate as to whether the question means modern H. sapiens, or the genus Homo, or the family Hominidae. 

I totally 100% agree with HEROI because most of the pelasgian language, Etruscan, Illyrian lang, Troian, etc...
are translable only in Albanian Language

Etrusc
from |> Esh tru -> Have brain

Troian
from |> Tru jan -> Are brain (are smart / have smart)

Illyrian etc...

Here's a link to the origin of Albania

http://www.albanian.com/main/history/origins.html

Greqi
from |> Gra qir -> Gra qira [modern Albanian]
__________________________________________________________
Ju shqipetar e dini, mos e perktheni, do vih koha per hakmarrje mos kini frik� vetem ju lutem ndihmoni z�mr�n Shqip�tare si n� nj� koh�, ju lutem.
Nuk ju duhet falur atyre pas gjith asaj qe na kane bere jo vetem tani por edhe ne histori. Na fshin historin bashke me te tjeret.

Originally posted by EagleAl I totally 100% agree with HEROI because most of the pelasgian language, Etruscan, Illyrian lang, Troian, etc... are translable only in Albanian Language Etrusc from |> Esh tru -> Have brain Troian from |> Tru jan -> Are brain (are smart / have smart) Illyrian etc... Here's a link to the origin of Albania http://www.albanian.com/main/history/origins.html Greqi from |> Gra qir -> Gra qira [modern Albanian] __________________________________________________________ Ju shqipetar e dini, mos e perktheni, do vih koha per hakmarrje mos kini frik� vetem ju lutem ndihmoni z�mr�n Shqip�tare si n� nj� koh�, ju lutem. Nuk ju duhet falur atyre pas gjith asaj qe na kane bere jo vetem tani por edhe ne histori. Na fshin historin bashke me te tjeret.

Here we go again...

1) You don't have records on the Trojan language.
2) Graqir which sounds pretty different that Grekoi, has a completely different meaning from the true story. Grekoi comes from the Greek tribal leader Grekos, which means "Gray" or inhabitant of Graia (fem. gray"). Names connected to colours or characteristics are usual in ancient greece e.g Xanthos (yellow) or Pyrrhos (blonde). However, the Roman aquired Grekoi comes from the colonists from Graia (Biottia, Greece) that founded Cumae in Italy. Grekos is also a synonym to "old" (e.g old man, Graia=old woman, gria=old woman in modern greek).
3) Troy, trojan etc is a new latinized term of the Troes, inhabitants of Troia, the city which got its name from the first King Tros.

In Greek:

(i) Troo (eat)
(you) Tros
(he/she) Troy
(we) Trome
(you) Trote
(they) Trone

So, Troes (Trojans) could be those who are "eaten" in Greek. However, I highly dissencourange anyone to use that etymology...

I just brought an example, to see how easy it is to be romantic sometimes. That is what that site you posted does...Another example is e.g that during the Renaissance the term "Illyrian language" was used for the Serbo-Croatian language. This was another romantic thought that was started in Slovenia.

The Illyrians, belong to the Halstat cultures that appeared in the balcan region between the 12th - 10th century BC. Before that Illyricum was inhabited by the Vucedols.

All these issues have been discussed here: http://allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=20909

Gentlemen, it is clear we are talking about the same group of languages that existed long before the settlement of Greece. However, a whole new set of never before resolved environmental factors had to be dealt with before any large scale settlement of Greece proper became possible. The solving of these problems, like growing olives, caused rapid changes into another branch of the same language tree.

This could indicate the proto-Greeks developed a logical and systematic way of approaching agriculture and ultimately ways of living that set them apart from other groups and their slower development. The Greeks didn't invent the city state but certainly did reinvent it in a flexible scheme where even clans and groups far apart became bonded by trade ties.

Can you please provide an ancient source that links Pelasgians with Illyrians or Trojans

• Homer (Iliad, II, 840-843) "the Pelasgians in the Iliad appear among the allies of Troy"
• Homer (Odyssey, 17.175-177)
• Sophocles, "Etruscans as sysnony of Pelasgians"
  
• ...

The pelasgian font (Lemnos) is the same of Etruscan font.
Etruscan font is the same of Illyrians (this is known) and all is connected to Albanian language.
Look at this and translate it with greek:

Translation from Albanian: "The ship is for us courage, freedom."

And translate this with greek:

From Albanian: "Support [your pains] and cry if it help you, but entrust it to the warm ground/land, to the Celestial Grace and to the Supreme Well"

You know, from the Illyrian language Liri=Freedom
Pelago-illyric(liri), Etruscan(liri), today Albanian(liri), Italian(libert�), French(libert�), Latin(libertas), Enlgish(liberty), Spanish(libertad), Rumen(libertade), Portughese(liberdade)

So please you cannot continue to afferm that Pelasgian and Troyan and Etruscan and Illyrian and Albanian language is not connected, if not the same.


Edited by EagleAl - 07-Sep-2007 at 17:57

Originally posted by EagleAl  e of Etruscan font. Etruscan font is the same of Illyrians (this is known) and all is connected to Albanian language.

Font? Can you show us Illyrian fonts please? Illyrians left very few writtings and that was script not even an alphabet while the rest you mention used an alphabet.

Now the pictures cannot be seen...

Originally posted by EagleAl You know, from the Illyrian language Liri=Freedom Pelago-illyric(liri), Etruscan(liri), today Albanian(liri), Italian(libert�), French(libert�), Latin(libertas), Enlgish(liberty), Spanish(libertad), Rumen(libertade), Portughese(liberdade) So please you cannot continue to afferm that Pelasgian and Troyan and Etruscan and Illyrian and Albanian language is not connected, if not the same.

Totally irrelevant...You still fail to tell something...

As for Graia please let the jokes outside. Graia (Grea) is not Grua. It is gray and is used for an old woman for obvious reasons.

There is a mania lately of Albanians trying to link everything with Albania.

Now can someone for once explain to me HOW CAN ILLYRIANS, A HALSTAT CULTURE that arrived in the 10th century BC, be Pelasgians, Trojans etc etc? This is a question everyone avoids to answer.

Originally posted by EagleAl Homer (Odyssey, 17.175-177)

Are you sure about this? Take a look again.

Book XVII? 175-177?

^^

Absolutely laughable theory.


Stop claiming Pelasgians are Albanian when  YOU HAVE NO PROOF!

And stop claiming Pelasgians as greek.

I can provide you plenty of ancient quotes linking Hellenes to Pelasgians but you cannot provide me ONE piece of evidence connecting Pelasgians to Illyrians to Albanians.....


Homer

in the Iliad appear among the allies of Troy In the section known to scholars as the Catalogue of Ships, which otherwise preserves a strict geographical order, they stand between the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of south-east Europe, i.e. on the Hellespontine border of Thrace (2.840-843). Homer calls their town or district "Larissa" and characterises it as fertile, and its inhabitants as celebrated for their spearsmanship. He records their chiefs as Hippothous and Pylaeus, sons of Lethus son of Teutamus. Iliad, 10.428-429, describes their camping ground between the town of Troy and the sea.

The Odyssey, 17.175-177, places the Pelasgians in Crete together with two apparently indigenous and two immigrant peoples (Achaeans and Dorians), but gives no indication to which class the Pelasgians belong. Lemnos (Iliad, 7.467; 14. 230) has no Pelasgians, but a Minyan dynasty. Two other passages (Iliad, 2.681-684; 16.233-235) apply the epithet "Pelasgic" to a district called Argos about Mt Othrys in southern Thessaly, and to the temple of Zeus at Dodona, in Epirus. But neither passage mentions actual Pelasgians; Hellenes and Achaeans specifically people the Thessalian Argos, and Dodona hosts Perrhaebians and Aenianes (Iliad, 2.750) who are nowhere described as Pelasgian. It looks therefore as if "Pelasgian" was used in Homeric epic connotatively, to mean either "formerly occupied by Pelasgians" or simply "of immemorial age."

Post-Homeric

Strabo quotes Hesiod as expanding on the Homeric phrase, calling Dodona "seat of Pelasgians" (fragment 225); he speaks also of the eponymous ancestor of the Pelasgians, Pelasgus(: Πελασγός), the father of the culture-hero of Arcadia, Lycaon. After Hesiod, a number of early authors flesh out his brief statement. An early genealogist, Asios of Samos, describes Pelasgus as the first man, literally born of the earth to create a race of men. An early poet, Hecataues, makes Pelasgus king of Thessaly (expounding Iliad, 2.681-684); Acusilaus applies this Homeric passage to the Peloponnesian Argos, the Argolid, and engrafts the Hesiodic Pelasgus, father of Lycaon, into a Peloponnesian genealogy.

Hellanicus repeats this identification a generation later, and identifies this Argive or Arcadian Pelasgus with the Thessalian Pelasgus of Hecataeus. Aeschylus regards Pelasgus as earthborn (Supplices I, sqq.), as in Asius, and ruler of a kingdom stretching from Argos to Dodona and the Strymon; but in Prometheus 879, the "Pelasgian" land simply means Argos. Sophocles takes the same view (Inachus, fragment. 256) and for the first time introduces the ethnonym Tyrrhenoi, apparently as synonymous with "Pelasgians". Euripedes calls the inhabitants of Argos Pelasgian Orestes.

 In Herodotus

,Herodotus like Homer, has a denotative as well as a connotative use. He describes actual Pelasgians surviving and speaking mutually intelligible dialects

• at Placie and Scylace on the Asiatic shore of the Hellespont;
• near Creston on the Strymon; in this area they have "Tyrrhenian" neighbors (Persian Wars 1.57).

He alludes to other districts where Pelasgian peoples lived on under changed names; Samothraki and Antadrusin the Troad probably provide instances of this. In discussing Lemnos and Imbros he describes a Pelasgian population whom the Athenians conquered only shortly before 500BC, and in connection with this he tells a story of earlier raids of these Pelasgians on Attica, and of a temporary settlement there of Hellespontine Pelasgians, all dating from a time "when the Athenians were first beginning to count as Greeks."

Contrary to modern understanding, Herodotus was convinced that the Hellenes were not invaders, but descendants of Pelasgians:

"The Hellenic race has never, since its first origin, changed its speech. This at least seems evident to me. It was a branch of the Pelasgic, which separated from the main body, and at first was scanty in numbers and of little power; but it gradually spread and increased to a multitude of nations, chiefly by the voluntary entrance into its ranks of numerous tribes of barbarians. The Pelasgi, on the other hand, were, as I think, a barbarian race which never greatly multiplied."

That the Athenians were autochthonous was expressed mythically in the stories of Erectheus and Ericthonius and was emphatically stated by Isocrates in Panegyric 25:3:

"For we did not win the country we dwell in by expelling others from it, or by seizing it when uninhabited, nor are we a mixed race collected together from many nations, but so noble and genuine is our descent, that we have continued for all time in possession of the land from which we sprang, being children of our native soil, and able to address our city by the same titles that we give to our nearest relations, for we alone of all the Hellenes have the right to call our city at once nurse and fatherland and mother."

Elsewhere "Pelasgian" in Herodotus connotes anything typical of, or surviving from, the state of things in Greece before the coming of the Greeks (in this sense one could regard all of Greece as formerly "Pelasgic"). The clearest instances of Pelasgian survivals in ritual and customs and antiquities occur in Arcadia, the "Ionian" districts of the north-west Peloponnese, and Attica, which have suffered least from hellenization. In Athens itself the prehistoric wall of the Acropolis and a plot of ground close below it received veneration in the 5th century as "Pelasgian"; so too in Thucydides (2.17).

We may note that all Herodotus' examples of actual Pelasgi lie round, or near, the actual Pelasgi of Homeric Thrace; that the testimony of Thucydides (4.106) confirms the most distant of these as to the Pelasgian and Tyrrhenian population of the adjacent seaboard: also that Thucydides adopts the same general Pelasgian theory of early Greece, with the refinement that he regards the Pelasgian name as originally specific, and as having come gradually into this generic use.

The historian Ephorus preserves a passage from Hesiod that attests to a tradition of an aboriginal Pelasgian people in Arcadia, and developed a theory of the Pelasgians as a warrior-people spreading from a "Pelasgian home", and annexing and colonizing all the parts of Greece where earlier writers had found allusions to them, from Dodona to Crete and the Troad, and even as far as Italy, where again their settlements had been recognized as early as the time of Hellanicus, in close connection once more with "Tyrrhenians."

Nothing in the ancient discussion of the Pelasgians is inconsistent with the Greeks, at least the Athenians, being autochthonous. Greece has been inhabited at least since the Neolithic, and there is no reason to believe that the classical Greeks were not also genetic and cultural descendants from the pre-existing inhabitants, even if the Greek languages originated from an external source.

The copious additional information given by later writers either interprets local legends in the light of Ephorus's theory, or explains the name "Pelasgoi"; as when Philochorusexpands a popular etymology "stork-folk" into a theory of their seasonal migrations; or Apollodorus says that Homer calls Zeus 'Pelasgian' "because he is not far from every one of us".

The connection between the Pelasgians and the Tyrrhenians, which began with Hellanicus, Herodotus and Sophocles, becomes confusing in the 3rd century, when the Lemnian pirates and their Attic kinsmen become plainly styled as Tyrrhenians, and early fortress-walls in Italy (like those on the Palatine Hill in Rome) appear as "Arcadian" colonies. The character of the ancient citadel wall at Athens has given the name "Pelasgic masonry" to all constructions of large, unhewn blocks fitted together with mortar, from Asia Minor to Spain, the massive character that has also been called "cyclopean".

Any mention of a connection between Illyrian/Albanians by ancient writers and historians to the Pelasgians? NO! The ancients are clear where they place the Pelasgians....In Greece, Troad, and other parts of Asia Minor, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, and even in southern Italy, but NEVER in Illyria (Albania)!



Edited by chicagogeorge - 08-Sep-2007 at 16:47

Unbelievable. It's a conspiracy to hide to the world that the Albanians are the oldest Balkan people. Where is your proof? Please show me any historical evidence linking Albanians with Pelasgians? I have given you many quotes from sources that are over 2000 years old. NONE of them EVER mention Illyrians with Pelasgians. Was there a conspiracy against Albanians back then too!

Originally posted by EagleAl Last, translate with greek: Pelasgians (from PELLG then PELLASG = deep sea, as you can view it's intended for expert navigators), Balkan (from BALL KAN= "they have forefront" linkable to Etruscans, Troians, Pelasgians, Illyrians), Illyrians (I LIR� JAN� = are free people, founded by Pelasgians), Etruscans (E tru kan/jan = have brain / are smart), Troians (tru jan = have brain / are smart), Dorians (Dor = "hand" -  An/Kan = "have"; expert with hand, expert warriors). And stop claiming Pelasgians as greek.

The term Balkan is an Albanian word!

I suggest you use a non-nationalist website to find out the true origins of words.
http://www.etymonline.com/





Edited by chicagogeorge - 08-Sep-2007 at 16:45