The ancient Illyrians were the ancestors of the modern Albanians, a people numbering in all nearly two million souls, occupying a portion of western Turkey, bordering on the Adriatic Sea, about 40° north latitude. They are scarcely more than semi-civilized, and neither in ancient nor modern times have they taken any prominent part in the history of Europe. Their language undoubtedly belongs to the Aryac stock, and has various affinities with Greek and Latin, but is a long-separated and almost isolated fragment of Aryac speech. The national name they give themselves is Skypetars, which means mountaineers. They are also known as Arnauts.
The physical type of the Albanians is mixed, those to the south being chiefly blondes, to the north brunettes; their skulls are generally long, their stature tall, their bodies muscular. Some of them are Mohammedans, others Roman Catholics, while others belong to the Greek church. In disposition they are turbulent and warlike, caring little for the amenities of civilization.
The nearest related groups to the Illyrians are believed to have been the Thracians, who were a blonde people, the Dacians, who were largely Celtic, and the Macedonians. Some recent writers have argued that the ancient Japyges were Illyrians, and had occupied most of the peninsula of Italy previous to the arrival of the Latins;[97] but this question remains obscure.
It is acknowledged even by those who maintain the Asiatic origin of the Aryans that the Greeks entered the peninsula and the adjacent isles of the Ionian and Egean seas from a northwesterly direction.[98] It has been also argued “from the unmixed character of their language” that they found the region uninhabited,[99] but there are reasons for believing that it was sparsely populated by a non-Aryac people of the Euscaric physical type.[100]
The separation of the Greeks from the southern Aryac stream took place somewhere in the valley of the Danube, whence a portion of the original Hellenes moved down the Adriatic into the Morea, and other bands known as Carians, Leleges, Phrygians, etc., passed into Asia Minor.[101] Even the island of Cyprus, close to the Syrian shore, appears to have supported a Greek population previous to its occupancy by the Egyptians and Semitic peoples.[102]