"In the beginning ..."
- Genesis 1:1
The Roman historian, Appian, tells the story of Poseiden's son, the one-eyed Polyphemus who resides on the island of Sicily, and his love for Galatia, a sea nymph. She bears Polyphemus three sons one of them being Illyrius who founded Illyria. However, this appears unlikely, although it makes for a good story, as the Illyrians were not known as one-eyed barbarians nor as having originated from Sicily. In any case, archaeology has been a bit more helpful.
The Illyrians were of the Indo-European race - a Caucasoid people believed to have originated from the Caucasus Mountains in today's Georgia republic south of Russia. The Illyrians are said to have been a people of the Urnfield culture (see Stipcevic, The Illyrians) - a period in European history (late Bronze Age) of placing the cremated bones of the dead in an urn and burying it in a field corresponding with their emergence in the Balkan peninsula at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age sometime in the second millennium BC. Yet, evidence that the Illyrians were a people who intially settled the eastern Mediterranean and then migrated from Asia Minor are found in ancient texts.
Homer's Iliad states that the Trojans had allies fighting along side them to fend off the Achaeans (Greeks) at the time of the Trojan War. These allies are noted as the Dardanians. No other peoples are named as such except for the tribe of the same name in Illyria. These Illyrians could have shared a kinship with the Trojans or were Trojan themselves as Dardanus was the mythical founder of Troy and ancestor to the Dardanians as mentioned in the Iliad. In addition, some artifacts found within the vicinity of ancient Troy have been acknowledged as Illyrian proto-type. Further support upholding the claim of Illyrian origins in Asia Minor come from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
In the thirteenth century BC, Ramesses the Great of Egypt fought a battle with the Hittites - another people of unknown origin who spoke an Indo-European language and created an empire in Asia Minor now central Turkey - over the control of Kadesh (Syria). The Hittites also had allies and the Egyptians recorded them as the "Drdny" (see Gurney, The Hittites). Once again, no other peoples resemble this name except for the Dardanians of Illyria. If the Dardanians did not have a kinship with the Hittites they must have dwelled near by (Trojans) and consorted with them. Moreover, a connection between the Illyrian name and the tantalizingly similar ancient name of a Hittite mythical serpent "Ilurjanka" assists the hypothesis of their Asia Minor origins. This serpentine connection is further supported by the story of yet another "Illyrian genesis."
The ancient writer, Apollodorus, recorded the Phoenician, Cadmus (Illyrian?), coming to the aid of the Encheleae who were at war with the tribes from the north. Cadmus conquered these tribes and in his victory was named king of the Encheleae. His wife, Harmonia, bore him a son, Illyrius, who also ruled over them, thus, were named after him.
At birth, Illyrius was supposedly empowered by a serpent (Ilurjanka?). In addition, his parents, Cadmus and Harmonia, were punished by the Greek god Zeus for past grievances and forced to live out the rest of their days as serpents. In fact, the very tribe that Cadmus comes to aid, the Encheleae, translates to "eel men" from the Greek and one can surely see the serpentine likeness of an eel. Even the root word in "Illyrian" means "to turn" or "wind around" in the Greek and it has been well established that in southern Illyria the serpent was the primary and divine symbol of worship (See Religion).
Other evidence of the Illyrian origins in Asia Minor were mentioned earlier with the connection of the Illyri-Italic Veneti tribe and the Eneti of Paphlagonia in Asia Minor. Likewise, the Illyrian tribe, the Bryges, who once took the city of Epidamnus upon returning from Phyrgia, and the Phyrgians of Asia Minor were one and the same people (see Herodotus and Appian's Civil Wars).
This argument is lastly supported by the arrival of the Illyrians (more appropriately, proto-Illyrians as "Illyrianization" did not begin until their settlement in southeastern Europe) in the Balkans coinciding with (twelfth century BC) the fall of Troy, the demise of the Hittite kingdom as well as the historic Bronze Age Collapse (see Robbins, Collapse of the Bronze Age ... ) which resulted in the large-scale movement of peoples into Europe (Dardanians? Phyrgians? Eneti? -see image of asia minor).
