Editing Epirus (section)

===Early history===
[[File:EpirusMycynaen.jpg|right|thumb|[[Mycenaean civilization|Mycenaean]] sites in the [[Epirus (region)|region of Epirus]]]]
In the Neolithic period Epirus was populated by seafarers along the coast and by shepherds and hunters from the southwestern Balkans who brought with them the Greek language. These people buried their leaders in large mounds containing shaft graves. Similar burial chambers were subsequently used by the Mycenaean civilization, suggesting that the founders of [[Mycenae]] may have come from Epirus and central [[Albania]]. Epirus itself remained culturally backward during this time, but Mycenaean remains have been found at two religious shrines of great antiquity in the region: the Oracle of the Dead on the Acheron River, familiar to the heroes of Homer’s [[Odyssey]], and the Oracle of [[Zeus]] at Dodona, to whom Achilles prayed in the Iliad.<ref name=Britannica/>

In the Middle Bronze Age, Epirus was inhabited by the same nomadic Hellenic tribes that went on to settle in the rest of Greece.<ref>{{harvnb|Borza|1992|pp=62, 78, 98}}; {{harvnb|Minahan|2002|p=578}}.</ref> Aristotle considered the region around Dodona to have been part of [[Ancient Greece|Hellas]] and the region where the [[Hellenes]] originated.<ref>{{harvnb|Hammond|1986|p=77}}: "The original home of the Hellenes was 'Hellas', the area round Dodona in Epirus, according to Aristotle. In the Iliad it was the home of Achilles' Hellenes."</ref><ref>Aristotle. ''Meteorologica'', [http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/meteorology.1.i.html 1.14] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629061102/http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/meteorology.1.i.html |date=29 June 2011 }}: "Rather we must take the cause of all these changes to be that, just as winter occurs in the seasons of the year, so in determined periods there comes a great winter of a great year and with it excess of rain. But this excess does not always occur in the same place. The deluge in the time of Deucalion, for instance, took place chiefly in the Greek world and in it especially about ancient Hellas, the country about Dodona and the Achelous, a river which has often changed its course. Here the Selli dwelt and those who were formerly called Graeci and now Hellenes."</ref> 

According to Bulgarian linguist [[Vladimir I. Georgiev]], Epirus was part of the [[Proto-Greek language|Proto-Greek linguistic area]] during the Late Neolithic period.<ref>{{harvnb|Georgiev|1981|loc=p. 192: "''Late Neolithic Period'': in northwestern Greece the Proto-Greek language had already been formed: this is the original home of the Greeks."}}</ref> By the early 1st millennium BC, all fourteen Epirote tribes including the [[Chaonians]] in northwestern Epirus, the [[Molossians]] in the centre and the [[Thesprotians]] in the south, were speakers of a strong west Greek dialect.<ref name=Britannica/><ref name="OCD527"/><ref>{{harvnb|Hammond|1998}}; {{harvnb|Wilkes|1995|p=104}}; {{harvnb|Hammond|1994|pp=430, 434}}; {{harvnb|Hammond|1982|p=284}}.</ref>