The
Paleo-Balkan languages were the
Indo-European languages which were spoken in the
Balkans in
ancient timesThe modern languages descending from Paleo-Balkan languages include Greek and Albanian.
Dacian, Thracian, or Illyrian have all been proposed as the language from which Albanian may have evolved, but it is still disputed which language was its ancestor. Many substratum words of Paleo-Balkan origin are found in Romanian, and in some South-Slavic languages; such as Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbo-Croatian.
The Greek language and Phrygian language derive from the same group. It is known that the Hellenes migrated to the Greek mainland from the Northern part of Balkans in several waves between 2000 BC and 1000 BC, and also the Phrygians are known to have moved to Anatolia from Thrace, in around 1200 BC.
