loanwords from other languages, have led to the conclusion that the dialectal split preceded the Slavic migration to the Balkans.

According to the view of Demiraj, during the process of dialect split Albanian populations were roughly in their present location, while Eric Hamp notes that "it must be relatively old, that is, dating back into the post-Roman first millennium. As a guess, it seems possible that this isogloss reflects a spread of the