>>16887735
are those dots the remains of the 4th crusade?

>>16887740
no
thessalonica and epirus were still firmly under eastern roman control

>>16887735
>>16887740
>What's up with all the little dots in Greece and Albania?
They are vlach people, latinized (by the romans) thraco-greek people who dwelled most likely in the central balkans but got pushed southwards when the slavs arrived.
They speak a language related to romanian.

>>16887735
Romans and Romanised Illyrians in the Balkans got fucked up by successive invasions and were pushed into mountainous areas where they scraped by as semi-nomadic shepherds. Enough of them coalesced in the Carpathian area that they absorbed the indigenous Dacians and later incoming Slavic and Turkic tribes, forming feudal polities by the later middle ages. This became Romania. Other groups remained semi-nomadic herders, like the Aromanians of Greece and other parts of the Balkans.