Epigram... "To that special someone: I'll be there, when you expect me the least, yet when you need me the most."

I heard this epigram from my Dad. It probably has another version in the Bible somewhere (?), but I think its real source is a lot older, this one is based on a typical Albanian folk psyche, my guess is it precedes the Biblical and the Greek experience and rests on the remnants of what’s left of ancient Illyria (today’s Albania, Kosova [Kosovo], parts of Montenegro, Western Macedonia, parts of northern Greece such as Chameria, etc.). Illyric sources have arrived mainly by way of Albanian folklore such as, via songs, proverbs, and traditions that preserved it more or less intact, and Albanian was only one of its linguistic branches! Likely, Greek, Latin, and the other Indo-European languages and nations branched off Illyria, but we still have to wait for the linguists to reconfirm that fact once their studies into “vowel-formations” in all languages are conclusive, in all probability many, many years from now.

20,000 [+/-] years ago, the only known world was the Mediterranean coastal region. Northern Europe was under ice and uninhabitable, and the southern hemisphere was too hot.

In a nutshell, according to archeologists, anthropologists, historians and other experts, humankind started in Africa, then moved eastward thru north via Egypt and Israel into today’s Turkey then into Albania and Greece before reaching the rest of Europe [they had to wait for the ice to thaw!]; whereas southward they followed another route, i.e. via today’s Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, then into Iran, India and beyond. Different languages, physical traits, and other human factors or variations are simply “dormancies” imposed on all of us by time coupled by geographic isolation along these budding routes of ancient times, so say the experts. Chinese historians dispute the above-mentioned theory of our geographical evolution, and they may very well be right, they maintain everyone broke off China and moved westward as well as elsewhere.

Be as it one day may, the northern European route of human development conceivably still begins and ends in ancient Illyria, which stretched from parts of Vienna-Austria in the north to Ankara-Turkey in the south, and Russia in the east to Britain in the west. It is plausible therefore to assume that the early settlers navigated the coastal waterlines of the Mediterranean as they moved forward in various stages of colonization of the area.

Illyria was one huge empire then, which left a permanent mark on human history; it is mostly absorbed into successive European cultures now. For example, a huge section of ancient Greek culture and language is decipherable via the Illyric-Albanian language exclusively, for the Greek language has morphed many of the original classic concepts into almost worthless shades of meaning; it is sort of akin to differences of British, American, and Australian spoken English, or the Greek/Latin prefixes, suffixes, and root words attached to today’s medical vocabularies at large.

Another example is the story of Dardanians; another tribe of Illyrians that lived in what is today Kosova (Kosovo) and in northwestern Turkey near ancient Troy [Truva], so called the Dardanelles Straits (Ancient Hellespont: Today's Çanakkale Boğazı ).  According to Albanian folk legends, Dardanians fought the Romans for nearly a hundred years or so even though they were outnumbered almost 100 to 1.  It impressed the Romans so much that they adopted the entire Illyrian political and military system into their own wherewithal once the Illyrian principalities were co-opted and joined the Roman Empire.

E.g., the elite military guards of Rome were called “Praetorians,” a concept borrowed from Illyria. In Illyric-Albanian that word means, “Waits on the Hour” or what we may call the “Minute Man,” that is “Soldiers who are on duty around the clock.” Therefore, a few words said can reveal so much that has gone unsaid in time, such as the epigram you have just read. Hope this explanation sheds some light on the entire write as far as I can decipher it; alas, Illyria is still largely a work in progress for all practical purposes.