Pan-Illyrian hypotheses or pan-Illyrian theories were proposed in the first half the twentieth century by philologists who thought that traces of Illyrian languages could be found in several parts of Europe, outside the Balkan area. Such ideas have been collectively termed pan-Illyrianism or pan-Illyrism.
Pan-Illyrism had both archaeological and linguistic components. Archaeologists were looking for an ethnicity for the Lusatian culture, and linguists for the source of the Old European river names. First, French scholars pressed the case for an association with the Ligurians and Celts, while German prehistorians and linguists, beginning with Gustaf Kossinna,[1] and following Julius Pokorny and Hans Krahe, later linked the Illyrians with the Lusatian culture and Old European hydronyms. One of Kossinna's hypotheses suggested that at the time of the Hallstatt culture, which followed the Bronze Age in Central Europe (and is generally regarded as Proto-Celtic or early Celtic), a hypothetical Illyrian civilization in the middle Danube Valley was technologically more advanced than that of the early Celts to their immediate west, and elements of the Illyrians' material culture found their way into the original Celtic heartland (Hallstatt), as well as the easternmost Germanic tribes. According to Kossinna, the earliest use of iron in Central Europe might be attributed to the Illyrians rather than the Proto-Celts.[2]
Julius Pokorny located the Urheimat between the Weser and the Vistula and east from that region where migration began around 2400 BC.[3] Pokorny suggested that Illyrian elements were to be found in much of the continental Europe and also in the British Isles.
Pokorny's hypothesis was influenced, in part, by contemporary archaeological theories in Germany and was supported by contemporary toponymic specialists, such as Max Vasmer,[4] and Hans Krahe.[5]
Krahe's version
In his 1937 work, Hans Krahe discussed the Venetic language, known from hundreds of inscriptions as an Illyrian language, which forms the separate Illyrian branch of the Indo-European language family with the Messapic language of southern Italy and the Illyrian spoken in the Balkans. Krahe thought that only the name of the Illyrian and Adriatic Enetos peoples were the same.[6]Homer mentions a people in Asia Minor, the Paphlagonians, as coming from the Enetai province,[7] and a few hundred years later Herodotus refers to the Enetos people twice, once as Illyrian[8] and again as the occupants of the Adriatic sea.[9] Krahe thought that the name of the Illyrian and Adriatic Enetos peoples are the same and if Adriatic Enetos were Venets and Venets were the Veneds mentioned in other sources then Illyrian and Veneds were the same people. The basis of this hypothesis is not only the similarity of the tribal and place names, but most of all the water names of the Baltic and the Adriatic (Odra, Drava, Drama, Drweca, Opawa, Notec, etc.). Having the model of Illyrian in mind, he assumed that together these elements represented the remnant of one archaic language.
The problem was that the names of the Venets and Veneds, and similar ethnonyms, are scattered over a huge territory, from the British Isles to the Baltic Sea and from Northern Italy to the Southern Balkans. Since no trace of Illyrians remains in the Northern zone, the Venets (or Veneds) became the transmitter of the Illyrian place-names and by the end of World War II, the Illyrians had come to be held responsible for a vast web of Indo-European place names, spreading from Ireland and Gaul to the Balkan Peninsula.
By 1950, many of the onomastic irregularities once dubbed Illyrian had now become labeled "Old European". First, Krahe presented the view that the Veneti language forms a separate branch in itself. He noticed that the Illyrian language was attested only in some Messapic inscriptions and a number of place and other proper names. From this small amount of linguistic material, he concluded that Illyrian was a Centum language, and that its relationship with Germanic, Italic, and Celtic languages lie in that territory of the Urheimat of this language correlated solely with the Lusatian culture. In Krahe's words: "All of them – the Illyrians, the Italic, and the Venet have... clear connections to the Germans, that is they came from the north... and later moved to the south."[10] This meant that the people of the Lusatian culture would have advanced to the eastern part of the Alps to the historical territory of the Illyrians around 1200 BC.[11]
Following Krahe's work, János Harmatta placed Illyrians in South Germany and the Alpine region. Tribes living there would have spoken Illyrian which differed from Latinate, Celtic, Germanic, and Venetic. Around 1300 BC, the people of the Barrow-mound culture, the Illyrians, would have moved eastwards and then southwards along the Danube ("the first Illyr migration"); and in 750 BC the people of the Hallstatt C culture would have expanded toward western Hungary ("the second Illyr migration") and gathered Pannonian tribes to themselves.[12] 1000 BC is considered the beginning of the historical peoples we call the Illyrians.[13]
In his later work, Krahe substituted Pokorny's hypothesis with that of Old European hydronymy, a network of names of water courses dating back to the Bronze Age and to a time before Indo-European languages had split and developed in central, northern, and western Europe.[14] He examined the layers of European water names and did so using two theses. The first was that the oldest layer will always be the one that can not be explained with the language of the people who currently live on the banks or shores of the given water, and/or consist of a monosyllabic stem carrying a meaning (at times derived or conjugated monosyllabic words). He found that these monosyllabic water names give a system which he called Alteuropäisch ('Old European').[15] The network of old European water names comprises waters from Scandinavia to lower Italy, and from the British Isles to the Baltic. It denotes the period of development of the common Indo-European language which was finished by the second millennium BC. Krahe's second thesis was that by this time, the Western languages (Germanic, Celtic, Illyrian, the so-called Italic group– the Latin–Faliscan and the Oscan–Umbrian– along with Venetic–Baltic, and to some extent Slavic) had already dissociated from the ancient Proto-Indo-European language, though he considered that they still constituted a uniform Old European language continuum, were to later divide more sharply).[16] The similarities in European hydronyms resulted from the radiation of this Old European system, and not from the resemblance of the common words in the later separate languages.[17]
Other versions
While many scholars placed Illyrian in North Europe other scholars extended the territory of the Illyrian people in the south too (Giuliano Bonfante, Vladimir I. Georgiev, etc.). One of them, Georgiev, claimed that "the Pelasg, that is the people before the Hellas Greeks, were Illyrian".[18][19] Their language would have been Indo-European, more specifically a dialect of the Illyrian-Thracian language, and Etruscan was a later dialect of the latter. The Thracians and Illyrians would have been the link between the central (Italic, Greek, Aryan) and the southern (Pelasg, Luwiy, Hittite) Indo-European groups. Georgiev's hypothesis however, received a lot of criticism[20] and was not widely accepted.
Criticism
The Pan-Illyrian hypothesis received much criticism, and one of the many critiques was that of Antonio Tovar,[21] who demonstrated that the majority of hydronyms in the north of Europe had a non-Indo-European origin – an idea that Krahe dismissed, but was later reiterated by Theo Vennemann in his Vasconic substrate hypothesis.[22]
The Pan-Illyrian hypothesis began with archaeological findings also its end coincided with it.[clarification needed] As Radoslav Katičić linguistically restricted what is to be considered Illyrian,[23] newer archeological investigations made by Alojz Benac and B. Čović, archaeologists from Sarajevo, demonstrated that there was unbroken continuation of cultural development between Bronze and Iron Age archeological material, therefore ethnical continuation, too. This created the "autochthonous Illyrian" hypothesis, by which Illyrian culture was formed in the same place (Western Balkans) from older Bronze Age cultures.
According to Benac, the Urnfield culture bearers and proto-Illyrians were different people. Moreover, he claimed that the Urnfield culture migration might have caused several other population movements (e.g. Dorian migration).[24] This hypothesis was supported by Albanian archaeologists[25] and Aleksandar Stipčević, who says that the most convincing hypothesis for the genesis of the Illyrians was the one given by Benac; but pointing to Liburnians and their pre-Indo-European and Mediterranean phases in development, Stipčević claims that there was no equal processing[vague] of Illyrian origin in the different areas of the Western Balkans.[26]
The Veneti were an Indo-European people who inhabited northeastern Italy, in an area corresponding to the modern-day region of Veneto, from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC and developing their own original civilization along the 1st millennium BC.
Dacian is an extinct language generally believed to be a member of the Indo-European language family that was spoken in the ancient region of Dacia.
The Vistula Veneti, also called Baltic Veneti or Venedi, were an Indo-European people that inhabited the lands of central Europe east of the Vistula River and the Bay of Gdańsk. Ancient Roman geographers first mentioned Venedi in the 1st century AD, differentiating a group of peoples whose manner and language differed from those of the neighbouring Germanic and Sarmatian tribes. In the 6th century AD, Byzantine historians described the Veneti as the ancestors of the Slavs who, during the second phase of the Migration Period, crossed the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire.
The Illyrians were a group of Indo-European-speaking people who inhabited the western Balkan Peninsula in ancient times. They constituted one of the three main Paleo-Balkan populations, along with the Thracians and Greeks.
The Thracian language is an extinct and poorly attested language, spoken in ancient times in Southeast Europe by the Thracians. The linguistic affinities of the Thracian language are poorly understood, but it is generally agreed that it was an Indo-European language.
Venetic is an extinct Indo-European language, usually classified into the Italic subgroup, that was spoken by the Veneti people in ancient times in northeast Italy and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po Delta and the southern fringe of the Alps, associated with the Este culture.
The Paleo-Balkan languages are a geographical grouping of various Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Balkans and surrounding areas in ancient times. In antiquity, Dacian, Greek, Illyrian, Messapic, Paeonian, Phrygian and Thracian were the Paleo-Balkan languages which were attested in literature. They may have included other unattested languages.
Julius Pokorny was an Austrian-Czech linguist and scholar of the Celtic languages and of Celtic studies, particularly of the Irish language, and a supporter of Irish nationalism. He held academic posts in Austrian and German universities.
The language spoken by the Liburnians in classical times is basically unattested and unclassified. It is reckoned as an Indo-European language with a significant proportion of the Pre-Indo-European elements from the wider area of the ancient Mediterranean. Due to the paucity of evidence, the very existence of a distinct 'Liburnian language' must be considered hypothetical at this point.
The linguistic classification of the ancient Thracian language has long been a matter of contention and uncertainty, and there are widely varying hypotheses regarding its position among other Paleo-Balkan languages. It is not contested, however, that the Thracian languages were Indo-European languages which had acquired satem characteristics by the time they are attested.
Old European is the term used by Hans Krahe (1964) for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of European hydronymy in Central and Western Europe.
Hans Krahe was a German philologist and linguist, specializing over many decades in the Illyrian languages. He was born in Gelsenkirchen.
Celticisation, or Celticization, was historically the process of conquering and assimilating by the ancient Celts, or via cultural exchange driven by proximity and trade. Today, as the Celtic inhabited-areas significantly differ, the term still refers to making something Celtic, usually focusing around the Celtic nations and their languages.
Illyrian religion refers to the religious beliefs and practices of the Illyrian peoples, a group of tribes who spoke the Illyrian languages and inhabited part of the western Balkan Peninsula from at least the 8th century BC until the 7th century AD. The available written sources are very tenuous. They consist largely of personal and place names, and a few glosses from Classical sources.
Vladimir Ivanov Georgiev (1908–1986) was a prominent Bulgarian linguist, philologist, and educational administrator.
The Illyrian language was an Indo-European language or group of languages spoken by the Illyrians in Southeast Europe during antiquity. The language is unattested with the exception of personal names and placenames. Just enough information can be drawn from these to allow the conclusion that it belonged to the Indo-European language family.
This article contains information about Illyrian vocabulary. No Illyrian texts survive, so sources for identifying Illyrian words have been identified by Hans Krahe as being of four kinds: inscriptions, glosses of Illyrian words in classical texts, names—including proper names, toponyms and river names—and Illyrian loanwords in other languages. The last category has proven particularly contentious. The names occur in sources that range over more than a millennium, including numismatic evidence, as well as posited original forms of placenames. Messapic, an ancient language of Apulia which was of Balkan provenance and is grouped in the 'Illyric branch' of the Indo-European family, does have an epigraphic corpus, and some words have been recorded by ancient authors. Messapic words and relevant etymologies are listed in Messapic language#Lexicon.
Illyrology or Illyrian studies is interdisciplinary academic field which focuses on scientific study of Illyria and Illyrians as a regional and thematic branch of the larger disciplines of ancient history and archaeology. A practitioner of the discipline is called Illyrologist. His duty is to investigate the range of ancient Illyrian history, culture, art, language, heraldry, numizmatic, mythology, economics, ethics, etc. from c. 1000 BC up to the end of Roman rule around the 5th century.
↑ Pokorny, supported it by claiming that the suggested connection between Latin: aes 'copper' and Sanskritayas ('metal') with Proto-Celtic*isarnon 'iron' is wrong, because the latter was not of Celtic origin, but the long /i/ of the Celtic word is best explained if we regard Illyrian as the source of the Celtic term. He claimed that this was supported by archaeological data and concluded that the Illyrian word for 'iron' passed into Celtic when Celts first learned the use of the new metal from Illyrians (Pokorny, J. Sprachforschung, XLVI, 1914, p. 293).
↑ They were actually two different tribes, a fact that Krahe himself noticed later ("Das Venetische", 1950, p. 20). According to Steinacher (2002: 32), the Adriatic Veneti, the Veneti of Gaul and the North Balkan/Paphlagonian Enetoi mentioned by Herodotus and Appian were not related to each other, nor to the Veneti/Venedi mentioned by Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, and Ptolemy.
↑ Wilkes (1995), p.39: "On the other hand, the beginnings of the Iron Age around 1000 BC is held to coincide with the formation of the historical Illyrian peoples."
↑ Vladimir Georgiev: Die Träger der kretisch-mykenischen Kultur, ihre Herkunft und ihre Sprache. II Teil: Italiker und Urillyrier: die Sprache der Etrusker, Sofia 1938.
↑ Vladimir Georgiev: La toponymie ancienne de la péninsule balkanique et la thèse méditerranéenne. In: Balkansko ezikoznanie, Vol. 3, Bŭlgarskata akademia, 1961.
↑ Compare J. Fraser's review in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 60, 1940, pp. 99-100; Antonio Tovar's review in Language, Vol. 39, No. 3 (July–September 1963), pp. 478-483; Endre Bojtár: Foreword to the past: a cultural history of the Baltic people. Central European University Press, 1999, ISBN963-9116-42-4, 978-963-9116-42-9, p. 89.
↑ Benac (1964), Katičić, Radoslav. "Suvremena istrazivanja o jeziku starosjedilaca ilirskih provincija – Die neuesten Forschungen über die einheimische Sprachschicht in den illyrischen Provinzen", pp. 9–58.
↑ Benac (1964), Benac, Alojz. "Vorillyrier, Protoillyrier und Urillyrier", pp. 59–94.
Harmatta, János (1967). "Zum Illyrischen". Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 15: 231–234.
Katičić, Radoslav (1965). "Zur Frage der keltischen und pannonischen Namengebiete im römischen Dalmatien". Godisnjak (Annuaire). 3. Sarajevo: Centar za balkanoloske studije: 53–76.
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