ALBANIANS HISTORICAL ANTIQUITY

Antiquity

Not many nations can boast about an ancient and extremely antique history. Most can relate their beginnings as migrations from other continents or places, but not Albania. When an Albanian is asked how and from where their people originated they have no answer. And this is because Albanians are maybe the oldest people to occupy the Mediterranean region, and maybe one of the oldest cultures in world history. They did not migrate or arrive from somewhere else, they just existed in the area known as the Balkans. This in itself, guarantees and intricate and eloquent history that is sometimes passed over by many history books.

In the dark and solemn days of the wondrous lands, which would later be called the Balkans, there existed two people. One, that would later be known as the Greek people, and the other, the men that would form the nation of Albania. For centuries these two cultures would have many periods of cultural exchange and of cultural strife. There has been a distinction between the two very early on though. The Albanian, or Illyrian people, have been known to be as brute soldiers with strong features, and the Greeks, on the other hand as the eloquent philosophers. We are not attempting to change this fact. Albanians were warriors. But many times, they are not even given credit for the war-like and conquering geniuses it once produced. These men consist of people like Alexander the Great, Constantine the Great, Justinian, Dioclatian, and so on. And through the many conquerors, there have also escaped men like Aristotle. In this classical world, the lives of men were based around similar things. This accounts for the many works published in Greek or Latin. Yet, every time a notable person has come from a Northern Greece, he has come from Illirium, and there is no denying that.