Illyrians are the ancestors of the Albanians?

[Marcus Marulus]

The Bulgarian langauge lost cases too.

[ArabianKnight]

Originally Posted by Marulus

The Bulgarian langauge lost cases too.

The Bulgarian langauge belongs to the Slavic langauge family, and also its seems to have some what of an affanity with the Eastern Iranian langauges especially those spoken in the Pamirs. The Bulgarians were belived to be of Turkic origin, but its seems they are not Turkic origin but rather of Iranic origin. The Iranic origin for the Bulgars is supported by linguistic mainly and anthropolgicaly. The Turkic people are often Mongoloid or partialy Mongoloid, but the Bulgars are belived to be Caucasoids, thus the Iranic decent is more likely. Some people belive that all the Southern Slavs decent from Iranian tribes, that were Slavized at some point. The other Iranic groups such as the Persians for example probably when they migrated out of the Caucasus and into Iran intermarried with the locals, and especially the women, hence why their Y-chromsome is very closely related to Europeans and especially the Southern Slavs, well their mtDNA seems to be of Near Eastern origin.

[Ostrogorski]

Originally Posted by Monolith

Vlachs were (and still are) the Romance-speaking Balkan natives. The fact that the contemporary Albanians aren't romanized doesn't mean that they're not indigenous. Most of the Romance-speaking populations lived in, or near the coastal and inland cities. Those who lived in the hinterland or mountains were their non-romanized kinsmen.

Look at the Romanians, for example. Their language was a sui generis Romance-Slavic hybrid until the 19th century. You see, the situation was a bit complicated back then, so I don't think that the case is clear.

Yes, but you're assuming that they're indigenous per se, but that claim has yet to be proven by facts. So far no one provided any potential evidence to prove this claim, except few quasi-historical rants by the members of Berlin-Vienna school for the sake of Drang nach Osten politics. And Albanian ethnic name first emerges in history around 11th century AD, while last historical mention of some Illyrian tribal name is somewhere during Roman times. Not even the brightest history forger can fill that historical gap of almost 8 centuries...