WELCOME TO THE LAND OF THE ILLYRIANS!

Cultural anthropology which combines a few special disciplines such as ethnology, archaeology or linguistics, gives us a perfect insight into the history and heritage of a certain people, and it tries, fairly successfully, to show in a logical sense the evolutionary trend present throughout history among a certain people. Influences are, of course, socially multifaceted, and so with the cultural the religious influence was supplemented and the circle would be complete.

If we wish to monitor carefully that evolutionary sequence of events then we surely must reach out to mythology, its fantastic creatures and legends, mostly for the fact that mythology is the most archaic form of art which for the first time showed mankind's limitless imagination. Inhabiting nature and the world around them with highly unusual and different beings and appearances, mankind first of all showed their social nature, but also the need to express its intimate fears, hopes, aspirations and frustrations. The tendency to express oneself in the best possible way resulted in the appearance of various stories, legends, drawings and sculptures about a different world where the principles of good and evil are highly accentuated, and what is more important, where they show their meaning and efficiency. Through those mediums we come across information about classic frustration with everyday life to which people were subject to in the old days as well as today. That's why mythology as a discipline always suggests that there is no one answer but that there are many.


Consistency of mythological legends is evident in various segments of a society in its entirety, even though it might not be so visible at first glance. Some of its parts, smaller or larger segments, are so incorporated in everyday life that no one pays attention to them, nor is their deeper meaning analysed. In more recent past mythology was present in social memory mostly when one wanted to achieve a political goal, which is always connected with nationalism and genocidal ideas, which we could witness during the end of the last century when the militant politics of Serbia specifically and deliberately used the historic event, defeat by the Ottomans at Kosovo, to start their military invasion on neighbouring republics which had catastrophic circumstances, such as the genocide in Srebrenica but also in other cities in BiH.

When we want to study the mythology of Bosnia and Herzegovina but also of the entire former Yugoslavia we have to start from the historical fact that southern Slavs don't exist. There are only people of southern Europe which use Slavic languages, but those people are not of Slavic descent but Illyrian, especially the people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, which was proven a couple of times with the analysis of genetic origin. The mistake that historians made in their estimate of the origin of a certain people based solely on their language is catastrophic and, as we have witnessed, historically tragic. According to that theory todays Mexicans should be Spaniards, Brazilians or Portuguese, etc.

One of the studies on genetic origin of the inhabitants of former Yugoslav republics was implemented in cooperation with: Institute for Anthropological research in Zagreb, Medical University in Skopje, Clinical centre in Belgrade, Estonian Bio-centre at the Tart University, Medical University in Priština, Medical Faculty in Tuzla, Clinical hospital "Bijeli Brijeg" in Tuzla, Health centre in Zagreb and Medical school in Edinburgh - Scotland. For the results to be as close to reality in the field, the tests were gathered in all cities of the former Yugoslav republic.

The results showed that the most dominant were the haplogroup's on the territory of former Yugoslavia: 1lb, R1a, R1b and E3bl. Haplogroup l1b or so called "Illyrian gene" was the most widespread in all countries of former Yugoslavia, and the most interesting fact is that the group l1b was present even in 70% in Herzegovina, Dalmatia and other islands. In Bosnia this group was present in 52, 20% while the Slavic group R1 on the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina was present only in 24,60% of the cases.

Precisely those facts correspond with the ever present confusion of scientific circles, especially after genetic analysis, did the arrival of Slavic tribes to the Balkans really ever took place? There are indications which gain more authenticity, that such an event never took place, but that the Illyrians, after a difficult and long occupation by the Roman empire, created a pretty intelligent plan of survival and preservation through assimilation of languages of neighbouring Slavic countries in order to ensure some sort of peace and possibility for survival through a turbulent history.

Many segments of Illyrian religion are still present today in all countries that made up the former Yugoslav republic such as the snake cult, belief in stars-guardians of souls, cult of fertility, and solar and lunar cults, worship of water through the cult of god Bindu, belief in spellbound eyes, the name spellbound (Urok) is an Illyrian word, etc.