On 20 October, I quoted a post from the @AGDugin account about Albanians and their origins. My reaction was enthusiastic: a voice I described as an unexpected one was acknowledging the Illyrian connection that interests me.
That is the story behind my post. It records my reaction to a public comment, not a new historical discovery.
A comment and a study do different things
Editorial context: a political commentator’s agreement is not independent proof of an ancestry claim. The screenshot preserves the original post, including its nickname for Dugin; that nickname is not evidence of an official advisory role.
For the ancestry question, Davranoglou and colleagues’ 2026 study is a different kind of source. Its abstract reports continuity of western Balkan Bronze and Iron Age ancestry into early medieval Albania, alongside later admixture. That is more specific than a one-line social-media description.
The researchers’ evidence should be assessed through their samples and methods. The fact that a public figure agrees with a conclusion neither establishes the conclusion nor validates that person’s wider politics.
Read the study-focused article on Albanian ancestry
Original social post · 2026-10-19
