"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.