Origins
The historical beginning of the peoples we later know as Illyrians is placed at approximately 1000 BC. The origin of the Illyrians remains a problem for modern prehistorians. The consensus of the primordialists is that the ethno-linguistic ancestors of the Illyrians, labelled Proto-Illyrians, branched off from the main linguistic Proto-Indo-European trunk before the Iron Age. Current theories of Illyrian origin are based on ancient remnants of material culture found in the area, but archaeological remains alone have so far proven insufficient for a definite answer to the question of the Illyrian ethnogenesis.
When the Proto-Illyrians became a distinct group remains unclear. They emerge out of the wider Paleo-Balkans group by the Iron Age, although, since the language is not known in any detail, it is uncertain which populations should be classed as "Illyrian" on ethno-linguistic grounds, and many tribes formerly classed as Illyrian are now considered Venetic.
An autochthonous model, assuming an Illyrian ethnogenesis in the Balkans, was proposed by Alojz Benać and B. Čović, archaeologists from Sarajevo, who hypothesize that during the Bronze Age there was a progressive Illyrianization of peoples dwelling in the lands between the Adriatic and the Sava river. This theory was also proposed and supported by Albanian archaeologists for the southern Illyrian tribes, while Aleksandar Stipčević says that the most convincing model of Illyrian ethnogenesis was that of autochthony, excluding Liburnians.
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