Who are the Illyrians?

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• published: 15 Nov 2009
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"An extinct Indo-European language spoken in Illyria and known only from scattered personal and geographical names preserved in Greek and Roman sources." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/illyrian "They spoke a language of which almost no trace has survived. That is belonged to the family of Indo-European languages has been deduced from the many names of Illyrian peoples and places preserved in Greek and Latin records, both literary and epigraphic. We cannot be sure that any of them actually called themselves Illyrians: in the case of most of them it is near certain they did not." (John Wilkes, THE ILLYRIANS, p3) "In general the Illyrians have tended to be recognized from a negative standpoint, in that they were manifestly not Celts, Dacians or Thracians, or Greeks or Macedonians, their neighbours on the north, east and south respectively." (John Wilkes, THE ILLYRIANS, p3) "many Greek and Roman writers seem to vie with each other in expressing their contempt and detestation for Illyrians." (John Wilkes, THE ILLYRIANS, p3) "As 'savages' or 'barbarians' on the northern periphery of the classical world, even today Illyrians barely make the footnotes in most versions of ancient history and more often than not they are simply ignored." (John Wilkes, THE ILLYRIANS, p4) "The Illyrians of DALMATIA, PANNONIA and one part of MOESIA SUPERIOR were not a pure race. The earliest population of these lands was Thracian. Then came the Illyrians, who enslaved it. Later appeared the Celts, who mixed with the most important of the Illyrian tribes the Liburnians, Dalmatians, Iapudians, and Maezaeans in the Northern parts of the Adriatic area and the Talantians, the Encheleians, and the Ardiaeans in the Southern Regions." (Michael Ivanovitch Rostovteff, THE SOCIAL & ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, p219) "About the dawn of authentic history the Balkan peninsula seems to have been mainly occupied by two kindred Aryan peoples the Hellenes in the south, the Thrako-Illyrians in the north. Since then, or say, for some 3000 years, this region has been swept by more numerous tides of migration than almost any other country in the globe. Some of the waves, such as those of the Kelts 300 years before, and of the Goths 400 years after, the Christian era, receded without leaving any permanent traces behind them. Some, such as the Romans, are still represented by the Dako-Rumanians of the Danubian principalities and their southern kinsmen, the Zinzars or Kutzo-Vlachs of the Pindus range and Thessaly. Others, such as the Ugrian Bulgars, have been absorbed or assimilated to the Slavs, intruders like themselves, while others again have either resettled the land, as for instance the Serbo-Croatians, or else, like the Osmanli of Turki stock, have seized the political control without making any serious attempts at colonization." (Norman Taylor, NATURE, p243)