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Revision as of 20:05, 22 August 2005
The Illyrians were an Indo-European people, who inhabited the western Balkans from Epirus up into Pannonia before the Common Era. They spoke languages grouped in the Illyrian languages, a separate branch of Indo-European.
The Illyrians may have appeared in the western part of the Balkan peninsula about 1000 BC, a period coinciding with the end of the Bronze age and the beginning of the Iron age. The Illyrians were not a unified body but a group of many different tribes. These tribes however had a common culture and spoke related languages.
Whether the Albanian language descends from an Illyrian language is disputed among scholars (see Origin of Albanians).