Macedonia is known to have been inhabited from Neolithic times. Early inhabitants of the region were the
Pelasgians and later
Thracians and
Illyrians. Thracians in early times occupied mainly the eastern parts of Macedonia (Mygdonia, Crestonia, Bisaltia) but were also present in Eordaia and Pieria. Illyrians once occupied many parts of west Macedonia. The most tribes in the region ware of mixed origin like Paeonians and Dardanians. The
Ancient Macedonians migrated later in the south parts of the region.
Ancient Greek writers used the name Pelasgians to refer to groups of people who preceded the Hellenes and still dwelt in several locations in mainland Greece, Crete, and other regions of the Aegean, as neighbors of the Hellenes, into the fifth century B.C. The ancient Greek references to the Pelasgians are confusing; however, Greek writers agreed that Pelasgians had spoken a "barbaric"— which was simply to say "non-Greek"— language. No secure archaeological connection of Pelasgians with a Late Neolithic site have been made.
Thracians ethnically refers to a group of ancient Indo-European tribes who spoke a Thracian (or the closely related Dacian) language - a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family. Those peoples inhabited the Eastern, Central and Southern part of the Balkan peninsula, as well as the adjacent parts of Eastern Europe.
Illyrians has come to refer to a broad, ill-defined group of peoples who inhabited the western Balkans (Illyria, roughly from northern Epirus to southern Pannonia) and even perhaps parts of Southern Italy in classical times into the Common era, and spoke Illyrian languages. It is, however, less believable that in reality there was such a broad group that self-identified as Illyrians, and some argue that the ethnonym Illyrioi came to be applied to this large group of peoples by the ancient Greeks, Illyrioi having perhaps originally designated only a single people that came to be widely known to the Greeks due to proximity. Indeed, such a people known as the Illyrioi are supposed to have occupied a small and well-defined part of the south Adriatic coast.
The Ancient Macedonians populated the more southerly portions of Macedon since pre-Classical times. The first Macedonian state emerged 8th or early 7th century BC under the Argead Dynasty, when the Macedonians are said to have migrated to the region from further west. Besides the theory which regards Macedonians as a Greek-speaking tribe (Masson, Hammond), the Macedonians were sometimes spoken of as a tribe of Thrace, the land north-east of Greece, akin to the Thracians.(Sir William M. Ramsay). Rather than a Greek origin, some argue that the ancient Macedonians had an Illyrian or Thracian origin. It is also possible that the ancient Macedonians underwent ethnogenesis syncretizing Greek as well as Illyrian, and Thracian elements (cf. Borza, et al.).