Should we ignore the ancient writers?

Should we ignore the ancient writers?

Our earliest mentioning is in the 200 Anno Domini - 4 centuries before the arrival of the Serbs. They are mentioned as Albanoi, which is thought to mean 'white' - ironically, the Illyrian name for the tribe was parthini, and the first part -parth resembles our modern word -bardh, meaning precisely white, whereas the suffix -ini resembles our suffix -inj, defining the word as smth plural, i.e. Parthians, Parthinj.

That we're an autochtonous nation in the Balkans is not even disputed among prominent Serb intellectuals and historians. The only dispute is whether we're Illyrian or Thracian, which in relation to our autochtony in Kosova (ancient Dardania) is irrelevant, since ancient Kosova was home to both Illyrians as well as Thracians, as is confirmed by ancient toponyms. But whilst Serb and Bulgarian historians have advocated a Thracian or/and Dacian origins of our people, most others have supported the Illyrian thesis, to the point where now only Serbs seem to favor the Thracian alternative. The Croat historian and Illyrologist Aleksandar Stipcevic formulates himself rather well when he states following;

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The result achieved by workers in different disciplines in recent decades have reduced the importance of the work that relied on now obsolete linguistc evidence, and have made the autochthony of the Albanians, i.e. increasingly indisputable.

And this ...

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Nevertheless, the number of researchers still today refusing to take into consideration the many arguments supplied by different academic disciplines has shrunk, or, more accurately, absolutely the only researchers who deny the theory of Albanian autochthony are Serbian.

Source

Here's one Serbian document mentioning us in the 12th century, an extract from the Dusanova Zakonik;

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A brawl between villages, fifty perpers, (one perper was worth six gold francs); but between Vlachs and Albanians, one hundred perpers.

Here are some more quotes;

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In the II Century BC, the geographer and astronomer from Alexandria, Ptolemy drafted a map of remarkable significance for the history of Illyria. This map shows the city of Albanopolisi (located south of Durrës), from which the Albanians were later on to be identified by the world.

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The first mention of Albanians in the region corresponding to modern Albania is as the Arbanites of Arbanon in Anna Commenas account of the troubles in that region caused in the reign of her father Alexius I Comneus (1081- 1110) by the Normans. (The Alexiad The Alexiad is a book written around the year 1148 by the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, the daughter of Emperor Alexius I. She describe the political and military history Byzantine Empire during the reign of her father (1081-1110) , making it one of the most important sources of information on the Byzantines of the Middle Ages....

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In ‘History’ written in 1079-1080, Byzantine historian Michael Attaliates was first to refer to the "Albanoi" as having taken part in a revolt against Constantinople in 1043 and to the Arbanitai as subjects of the duke of Dyrrachium.

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1285 in Dubrovnik (Ragusa) where a sizeable Albanian community had existed for some time. In the investigation of a robbery in the house of Petro del Volcio of Belena (now Prati), a certain Matthew, son of Mark of Mançe, who appears to have been witness to the crime, states: "Audivi unam vocem clamantem in monte in lingua albanesca" (I heard a voice crying in the mountains in the Albanian language).

Link

Our first mentioning is in the 2th century AD, four centuries before the Serb arrival in the Balkans. It's from that Illyrian tribe (the Albanoi) we received our ethnonym. They were mentioned by the Greek geographer Ptolemy Claudius of Alexandria, in his work Geographia, as situated near the modern capital Tirana;

Our own medieval term for ourselves wasn't Albanian with the letter 'l', but Arberesh or Arberor or Arban, with 'r', from whence the Slav term 'Arbanas' and Greek term 'Arvanites' came from, when they referred to us. This name stems also from the Illyrian era;

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In the II Century BC, in the History of the World, written by Polybius, there is mention of a city named Arbon in present day central Albania. The people who lived there were called Arbanios and Arbanitai.

This mention of us is in the IIth century BC - 8 centuries before the arrival of the Serbs. I It doesn't end there though;

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In the I Century AD, Pliny the Elder mentions an Illyrian tribe named Olbonenses.