The
Slavic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of
Indo-European peoples, living mainly in
Europe, where they constitute roughly a third of the population. Since emerging from their original homeland (most commonly thought to be in
Eastern Europe) in the early
6th century, they have inhabited most of eastern
Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the
Balkans.
[1] Many settled later in
Siberia[2] and
Central Asia[3] or emigrated to other parts of the world.
[4][5]Slavic settlers mixed with existing local populations and later invaders, thus modern Slavic peoples are considerably genetically and culturally diverse. Yet they are connected by speaking often closely related Slavic languages, by a sense of common identity and history (which is present to different extents among different individuals and different Slavic peoples), and by predominantly being a Christian people.
Slavic peoples are traditionally divided along geographical lines into West Slavic (including Sorbs, Czechs, Poles and Slovaks), East Slavic (including Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians), and South Slavic (including Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes). For a more comprehensive list, see Ethno-cultural subdivisions.
The origin of the word Slav remains controversial. Excluding the ambiguous mention by Ptolemy of tribes Stavanoi and Soubenoi, the earliest references of "Slavs" under this name are from the 6th century AD. The word is written variously as Sklabenoi, Sklauenoi, or Sklabinoi in Byzantine Greek, and as Sclaueni, Sclauini, or Sthlaueni in Latin. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic and dating from the 9th century attest slovene to describe the Slavs around Thessalonica. Other early attestations include Old Russian slovene "an East Slavic group near Novgorod", Slovutich "Dnieper river", and Serbo-Croatian Slavonica, a river.
