Battle between the Slavs and the Scythians — painting by Viktor Vasnetsov (1881)
The early Slavs were an Indo-European peoples who lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages (approximately from the 5th to the 10th century AD) in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe and established the foundations for the Slavic nations through the Slavic states of the Early and High Middle Ages.[1] The Slavs' original homeland is still a matter of debate due to a lack of historical records; however, scholars believe that it was in Eastern Europe,[2] with Polesia being the most commonly accepted location.[3][4]
It is generally agreed[by whom?] that ancient Roman writers referred to the ancestors of Slavs as Venedi. The proto-Slavic term Slav shares roots with Slavic terms for speech, word , and perhaps was used by early Slavic people themselves to denote other people, who spoke languages similar to theirs.
The first written use of the name "Slavs" dates to the 6th century, when the Slavic tribes inhabited a large portion of Central and Eastern Europe. By then, the nomadic Iranian-speaking peoples living in the European Pontic Steppe (the Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, etc.) had been absorbed by the region's Slavic-speaking population.[5][6][7][8] Over the next two centuries, the Slavs expanded west to the Elbe river and the Alps, and south into the Balkans, absorbing Illyrian and Thracian peoples in the process,[9] and also moved east in the direction of the Volga River. Between the sixth and seventh centuries, large parts of Europe came to be controlled by Slavs, a process less understood and documented than that of the Germanic ethnogenesis in the west. Yet, the effects of Slavicization were far more profound.[10]
Beginning in the 7th century, the Slavs were gradually Christianized (both Greek Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism). By the 12th century, they were the core population of a number of medieval Christian states: East Slavs in the Kievan Rus', South Slavs in the Bulgarian Empire, the Principality of Serbia, the Duchy of Croatia and the Banate of Bosnia, and West Slavs in the Principality of Nitra, Great Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, and the Kingdom of Poland. The oldest known Slavic principality in history was Carantania, established in the 7th century by the Eastern Alpine Slavs, the ancestors of present-day Slovenes. Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps comprised modern-day Slovenia, Eastern Friul and large parts of modern-day Austria.
^Barford 2001, p. vii, Preface.
^"Slav | people". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
^Kobyliński 2005, pp. 525–526.
^Zdziebłowski, Szymon (10 August 2018). "Archaeologists found traces of the cradle of the Slavs in Belarusian Polesie". Science in Poland. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
^Brzezinski, Richard; Mielczarek, Mariusz (2002). The Sarmatians, 600 BC-AD 450. Osprey Publishing. p. 39. [...] Indeed, it is now accepted that the Sarmatians merged in with pre-Slavic populations.
^Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. p. 523. [...] In their Ukrainian and Polish homeland the Slavs were intermixed and at times overlain by Germanic speakers (the Goths) and by Iranian speakers (Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans) in a shifting array of tribal and national configurations.
^Atkinson, Dorothy; Dallin, Alexander; Warshofsky Lapidus, Gail, eds. (1977). Women in Russia. Stanford University Press. p. 3. [...] Ancient accounts link the Amazons with the Scythians and the Sarmatians, who successively dominated the Pontic steppe for a millennium extending back to the seventh century B.C. The descendants of these peoples were absorbed by the Slavs who came to be known as Russians.
^Slovene Studies. Vol. 9–11. Society for Slovene Studies. 1987. p. 36. [...] For example, the ancient Scythians, Sarmatians (amongst others), and many other attested but now extinct peoples were assimilated in the course of history by Proto-Slavs.
^Stanaszek, Łukasz Maurycy (2001). Fenotyp dawnych Słowian (VI-X w.)(PDF). Retrieved 11 April 2021.
^Geary 2003, p. 144: [B]etween the sixth and seventh centuries, large parts of Europe came to be controlled by Slavs, a process less understood and documented than that of the Germanic ethnogenesis in the west. Yet the effects of Slavicization were far more profound
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on the Byzantine frontier in the early 6th century and who were the early South Slavs) and of the Antes (East Slavs). Specifically, he states that the...
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Vol.23, 1965. pp. 178, 190 Barford, P. M. (2001). The earlySlavs : culture and society in early medieval Eastern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University...
EarlySlavs settled in the eastern and southern parts of the former Roman province of Pannonia. The term Lower Pannonia (Latin: Pannonia inferior, Hungarian:...
practices of the Slavs before Christianisation, which occurred at various stages between the 8th and the 13th century. The South Slavs, who likely settled...
the monarchs of the South Slavs adopted Christianity in the 9th century, the East Slavs in the 10th, and the West Slavs between the 9th and 12th century...
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the Goths, and by the early Middle Ages, the Scythians and the Sarmatians had been largely assimilated and absorbed by earlySlavs. The Scythians were instrumental...
6th and 7th-century Slavic migrations to Southeastern Europe of the EarlySlavs. These migrants absorbed the local Byzantines, who were primarily descendants...
Antes disappeared as a group and became ancestors of both the East Slavs and South Slavs. The Antes had similar if not identical customs and culture as the...
of various tribes, notably the Franks, Goths, Alemanni, Alans, Huns, earlySlavs, Pannonian Avars, Bulgars and Magyars within or into the territories...
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ancient Germanic history and culture. EarlySlavs Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Scythians Sarmatians See: Don Ringe, A Linguistic...
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and absorbed by the EarlySlavs. A people related to the Sarmatians, known as the Alans, survived in the North Caucasus into the Early Middle Ages, ultimately...
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resumed. Around the 6th century, these territories were settled by the earlySlavs. The Bulgars, led by Asparuh, attacked from the lands of Old Great Bulgaria...
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