[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Strabo, in particular – also mentioning Galabri and Thunatae as Dardanian tribes – describes the Dardani as one of the three strongest Illyrian peoples, the other two being the Ardiaei and Autariatae.

[16] The historian Justin, a main source about the history of the Macedonian kings, refers to an 'lllyrian war' between 346 and the end of 343 BC, fought by 'Dardani and other neighbouring peoples' against Philip II of Macedon, who won the conflict.

[23][24] After the Celtic invasion of the Balkans weakened the state of the Macedonians and Paeonians, the political and military role of the Dardanians began to grow in the region.

[28] The root Dard- is attested outside the Dardanian region and the Trojan-Dardanian area in several other ancient ethnonyms, personal names, and toponyms: Dardas, an opraetor epiratrum; Δερδιενις, name of Macedonian-Elimiot princes; Δερδια in Thessaly; Δερδενις in Lesbos; in ancient Apulia Dardi, a Daunian tribe, Derdensis a region and Δαρδανον, a Daunian settlement.

[33] In 1854, Johann Georg von Hahn was the first to propose that the names Dardanoi and Dardania were related to the Albanian word dardhë ("pear, pear-tree").

On the basis of an alleged connection between Albanian dardhë and Greek ἄχερδος, ἀχράς "wild pear", a common Indo-European root has been tentatively reconstructed by scholars: *ĝʰor-d- "thorn bush"; *(n)ĝʰ∂rdis; *ĝʰerzd⁽ʰ⁾- "thorny, grain, barley".

[37][39] More recently for the Albanian dardhë the Proto-Albanian *dardā has been reconstructed, itself a derivative of derdh "to tip out, pour, spill, secrete, cast (metals)" < PAlb *derda.

It has been proposed a possible link to darda "bee", maybe originally with the meaning of "noise", "chatter", compared with Sanskrit dardurá- "frog", "pipe", Lithuanian dardėt́i "to rattle", "chatter" (which however is regarded by Orel[40] as an onomatopoeic form connected to Albanian derdh, hence to dardhë, see above), Gkreek δάρδα · μέλισσα "bee", sometimes interpreted as μόλυσμα "stain", δαρδαίνει · μολύνει "to stain", both late antique attestations from Hesychius (5th century CE) and with aberrant semantics.

[42] Another link has been made with the PIE root *dhereĝh- "to hold", "strong", which would have evolved to dard- in consistency with the phonetic change of voiced palatal velars that are a characteristic trait of Albanian.

[43] The opinion criticising the etymologies based on roots that originally included *g̑h because in the earliest form of Albanian PIE *g̑h turned into *dʑ and correspondingly later into *dz, which should have been spelled in Greek/Latin documents with /z/, /s/, or a similar letter, instead of /d/, is refutable by the attestation of the Proto-Albanoid term diellina "henbane".

[44] This term was mentioned as a "Thracian-Dacian" phytonym by the Ancient Greek pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides (1st century AD), and it has a clear etymological connection with the Albanian word diell "sun" (diellina "henbane" belongs to the genus called solanum with the Latin root sol "sun", being so named because of its yellow leaves), displaying a characteristic Albanian phonetic change in which the voiced palatal velar *ĝ(h)- turned into the interdental dh or the dental d, passing through intermediate stages represented by the palato-alveolar affricate voiced ȷ́ [dʑ], dental affricate dz and further through a final stage dð (i.e. *ĝ(h)- > ȷ́ [dʑ] > dz > dð > dh/d: Alb.

Indeed, many similar examples of Palaeo-Balkan names with alternating spellings in ancient literature using both dentals and sibilants can be connected to an earlier stage of Albanian and furthermore provide strong support for Eric Hamp's thesis about the Proto-Albanoid dialects, spoken in the central-western Balkans including the historical regions of Dardania, Illyria proper, Paeonia, Upper Moesia, western Dacia and western Thrace.

[47] Historians of Hellenistic and Roman antiquity who mention the Dardanians are Diodorus Siculus, Marcus Terentius Varro, Strabo, Sallust, Appian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and others.

[48] According to a mythological tradition reported by Appian (2nd century AD), Dardanos (Δάρδανος), one of the sons of Illyrius (Ἰλλυριός), was the eponymous ancestor of the Dardanoi (Δάρδανοι).

Co-existence and intermingling of the Neolithic population and the PIE-speakers gave rise to the material culture which developed in the Bronze Age (2100-1100 BCE) in settlements including Vlashnjë, Korishë, Pogragjë, Bardhi i Madh and Topanicë.

[60] In Yugoslavian historiography, starting from Milutin Garašanin in the 1970s and 1980s, the Brnjica culture came to be interpreted as the "Daco-Moesian" and non-"Illyrian" linguistic component of the later Dardani.

The narrative of a distinct "Daco-Moesian" concept developed as a response to Albanian and Bulgarian researchers, and especially to changes inside Yugoslavia due to increasing local nationalisms.

[3][64] The Dardani are referred to as one of the opponents of Macedon in the 4th century BC, clashing with Philip II who managed to subdue them and their neighbors, probably during the early period of his reign.

However an open war have not been caused by their riots, since Alexander the Great managed to have the full control of the kingdom and its army after succeeding his father to the Macedonian throne.

[69] Further references to the Dardani are provided in the ancient sources describing Dardanian constant wars against Macedonians from the second half of the 3rd century BC.

[69] After the Celtic invasion of the Balkans weakened the state of the Macedonians and Paeonians, the political and military role of the Dardanians began to grow in the region.

[83][failed verification] The Romans found an ancient formed economy in Dardania, based on agriculture and animal husbandry, mining and metallurgy, in different handicrafts and in trade.

[94] An extensive study based on onomastics of the Roman era has been undertaken by Radoslav Katičić which puts the Dardanian language area in the Central Illyrian area ("Central Illyrian" consisting of most of former Yugoslavia, north of southern Montenegro to the west of Morava, excepting ancient Liburnia in the northwest, but perhaps extending into Pannonia in the north).

[115][116] Another extensive study based on onomastics in Thrace, eastern Macedonia, Moesia, Dacia and Bithynia has been carried out by Dan Dana in the 2010s, also taking into consideration current Balkan historical linguistics.

Dana concludes that the Illyrian character of Dardanian onomastics is unquestionable and that it is appropriate to definitively rule out the idea of a Thracian origin or participation (at least appreciable) in the ethnogenesis of the Dardani.

[9][118][92] The linguistic relationship between 'Illyrian' and 'Thracian' is uncertain due to the paucity of the available written material of those languages, consisting only of onomastic and toponymic evidence in the case of Illyrian, and the same for Thracian except for a few short inscriptions of difficult interpretation.

There is used a numerological and geometric approach through a multidimensional holographic field, which illustrates the Dardanian perception of the cosmic order and the interconnection between the material world and the higher realm.

[126] Dardanian funerary stelae portray representations of their mourning practice, which accurately mirrors the Albanian traditional lamentation of the dead – gjâma.

[112] the Dardanians ... living in the frontiers of the Illyrian and the Thracian worlds retained their individuality and, alone among the peoples of that region, succeeded in maintaining themselves as an ethnic unity even when they were militarily and politically subjected by the Roman arms [...] and when, towards the end of the ancient world, the Balkans were involved in far-reaching ethnic perturbations, the Dardanians, of all the Central Balkan tribes, played the greatest part in the genesis of the new peoples who took the place of the old ... Autariatae at the expense of the Triballi until, as Strabo remarks, they in their turn were overcome by the Celtic Scordisci in the early third centuryHere the old name of Dardania appears as a new province formed out of Moesia, along with Moesia Prima, Dacia (not Trajan's old province but a...

[..] The meaning of this state of affairs has been variously interpreted, ranging from notions of Thracianization' (in part) of an existing Illyrian population to the precise opposite.