In the 20th century, the country ofYugoslavia (fromSerbo-Croatian, literally meaning "South Slavia" or "South Slavdom") united a majority of the South Slavic peoples and lands—with the exception of Bulgarians and Bulgaria—into a single state. ThePan-Slavic concept ofYugoslavia emerged in late 17th-century Croatia, at the time part of theHabsburg monarchy, and gained prominence through the 19th-centuryIllyrian movement. TheKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, was proclaimed on 1 December 1918, following the unification of theState of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs with the kingdoms ofSerbia andMontenegro. With thebreakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, several independent sovereign states were formed.
The term "Yugoslavs" was and sometimes is still used as a synonym for "South Slavs", but it usually excludes Bulgarians since Bulgaria never formed part of the former Yugoslavia.
The South Slavs are known in Serbian, Macedonian, and Montenegrin asJužni Sloveni (Cyrillic:Јужни Словени); in Bulgarian asYuzhni Slavyani (Cyrillic:Южни славяни); in Croatian and Bosnian asJužni Slaveni (Bosnian:Јужни Славени); and in Slovene asJužni Slovani. The Slavic root*jug- means 'south'. TheSlavic ethnonym itself was used by 6th-century writers to describe the southern group of Early Slavs (theSclaveni); West Slavs were calledVeneti and East SlavsAntes.[1] The South Slavs are also calledBalkan Slavs.[2]
Another name popular in the early modern period wasIllyrians, using the name of a pre-Slavic Balkan people, a name first adopted by Dalmatian intellectuals in the late 15th century to refer to South Slavic lands and population.[3] It was then used by theHabsburg monarchy andFrance, and notably adopted by the 19th-century CroatianIllyrian movement.[4] Eventually, the idea ofYugoslavism appeared, aimed at uniting all South Slav-populated territories into a common state. From this idea emergedYugoslavia—which, however, did not includeBulgaria.[citation needed]
The Proto-Slavichomeland is the postulated area of Slavic settlement inCentral andEastern Europe during the first millennium AD, with its precise location debated by archaeologists, ethnographers and historians.[5] None of the proposed homelands reaches theVolga River in the east, over theDinaric Alps in the southwest or theBalkan Mountains in the south, or pastBohemia in the west.[6] Traditionally, scholars place it in the marshes of Ukraine, or alternatively between theBug and theDnieper;[7] however, according to F. Curta, the homeland of the southern Slavs mentioned by 6th-century writers was just north of theLower Danube.[8] Little is known about the Slavs before the 5th century, when they began to spread out in all directions.[citation needed]
Jordanes (fl. 6th century CE),Procopius (c. 500 -c. 565) and otherlate Roman authors provide the probable earliest references to southern Slavs in the second half of the 6th century.[9] Procopius described theSclaveni andAntes as two barbarian peoples with the same institutions and customs since ancient times, not ruled by a singleleader but living under democracy,[10] while Pseudo-Maurice called them a numerous people, undisciplined, unorganized and leaderless, who did not allow enslavement and conquest, and resistant to hardship, bearing all weathers.[11] They were portrayed by Procopius as unusually tall and strong, of dark skin and "reddish" hair (neitherblond norblack), leading a primitive life and living in scattered huts, often changing their residence.[12] Procopius said they werehenotheistic, believing in the god of lightning (Perun), the ruler of all, to whom they sacrificed cattle.[12] They went into battle on foot, charging straight at their enemy, armed with spears and small shields, but they did not wear armour.[12]
While archaeological evidence for a large-scale migration is lacking, most present-day historians claim that Slavs invaded and settled the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries.[13] According to this dominant narrative, up until the late 560s their main activity southward across the Danube was raiding, though with limited Slavic settlement mainly through Byzantine colonies offoederati.[14] TheDanube andSava frontier was overwhelmed by large-scale Slavic settlement in the late 6th and early 7th century.[15] What is todaycentral Serbia was an important geo-strategical Byzantine province, through which theVia Militaris crossed.[16] This area was frequently intruded upon bybarbarians in the 5th and 6th centuries.[16] From the Danube, the Slavs commenced raiding the Byzantine Empire on an annual basis from the 520s, spreading destruction, taking loot and herds of cattle, seizing prisoners and capturing fortresses. Often, the Byzantine Empire was stretched, defending its rich Asian provinces from Arabs, Persians and others. This meant that even numerically small, disorganised early Slavic raids were capable of causing much disruption, but could not capture the larger, fortified cities.[14] The first Slavic raid south of the Danube was recorded by Procopius, who mentions an attack of the Antes, "who dwell close to the Sclaveni", probably in 518.[17] Sclaveni are first mentioned in the context of the military policy on the Danube frontier of Byzantine EmperorJustinian I (r. 527–565).[18] Throughout the 6th century, Slavs raided and plundered deep into the Balkans, from Dalmatia to Greece and Thrace, and were also at times recruited as Byzantine mercenaries, fighting theOstrogoths.[19] Justinian seems to have used the strategy of 'divide and conquer', and the Sclaveni and Antes are mentioned as fighting each other.[20] The Antes are last mentioned as anti-Byzantine belligerents in 545, and the Sclaveni continued to raid the Balkans.[21] In 558 theAvars arrived at the Black Sea steppe, and defeated the Antes between the Dnieper and Dniester.[22] The Avars subsequently allied themselves with the Sclaveni,[23] although there was an episode in which the SclaveneDaurentius (fl. 577–579), the first Slavic chieftain recorded by name, dismissed Avar suzerainty and retorted that "Others do not conquer our land, we conquer theirs [...] so it shall always be for us", and had the Avar envoys slain.[24] By the 580s, as the Slav communities on the Danube became larger and more organized, and as the Avars exerted their influence, raids became larger and resulted in permanent settlement. Most scholars consider the period of 581–584 as the beginning of large-scale Slavic settlement in the Balkans.[25] F. Curta points out that evidence of substantial Slavic presence does not appear before the 7th century and remains qualitatively different from the "Slavic culture" found north of theDanube.[26] In the mid-6th century, the Byzantines re-asserted their control of the Danube frontier, thereby reducing the economic value of Slavic raiding. This growing economic isolation, combined with external threats from the Avars and Byzantines, led to political and military mobilisation. Meanwhile, the itinerant form of agriculture (lackingcrop rotation) may have encouraged micro-regional mobility. Seventh-century archaeological sites show earlier hamlet-collections evolving into larger communities with differentiated zones for public feasts, craftmanship, etc.[27] It has been suggested that the Sclaveni were the ancestors of the Serbo-Croatian group while the Antes were those of theBulgarianSlavs, with much mixture in the contact zones.[28][29] The diminished pre-Slavic inhabitants, also including Romanized native peoples,[a] fled from the barbarian invasions and sought refuge inside fortified cities and islands, whilst others fled to remote mountains and forests and adopted atranshumant lifestyle.[30] The Romance-speakers within the fortifiedDalmatian city-states managed to retain their culture and language for a long time.[31] Meanwhile, the numerous Slavs mixed with and assimilated the descendants of the indigenous population.[32]
By 700 AD, Slavs had settled in most of Central and Southeast Europe, from Austria even down to the Peloponnese of Greece, and from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, with the exception of the coastal areas and certain mountainous regions of the Greek peninsula.[33] TheAvars, who arrived in Europe in the late 550s and had a great impact in the Balkans, had from their base in the Carpathian plain, west of main Slavic settlements, asserted control over Slavic tribes with whom they besieged Roman cities. Their influence in the Balkans however diminished by the early 7th century and they were finally defeated and disappeared as a power at the turn of the 9th century byBulgaria and theFrankish Empire.[34] The first South Slavic polity and regional power wasBulgaria, a state formed in 681 as a union between the much numerousSlavictribes and thebulgars ofKhan Asparuh. The scattered Slavs in Greece, theSklavinia, were Hellenized.[35] Romance-speakers lived within the fortifiedDalmatian city-states.[31] Traditional historiography, based on DAI, holds that the migration ofSerbs andCroats to the Balkans was part of a second Slavic wave, placed during Heraclius' reign.[36]
Inhabiting the territory between the Franks in the north and Byzantium in the south, the Slavs were exposed to competing influences.[37] In 863 to ChristianizedGreat Moravia were sent two Byzantine brothers monksSaints Cyril and Methodius, Slavs from Thessaloniki on missionary work. They created theGlagolitic script and the first Slavic written language,Old Church Slavonic, which they used to translate Biblical works. At the time, the West and South Slavs still spoke a similar language. The script used,Glagolitic, was capable of representing all Slavic sounds, however, it was gradually replaced in Bulgaria in the 9th century, in Russia by the 11th century[38] Glagolitic survived into the 16th century in Croatia, used by Benedictines and Franciscans, but lost importance during theCounter-Reformation when Latin replaced it on the Dalmatian coast.[39] Cyril and Methodius' disciples found refuge in alreadyChristian Bulgaria, where theOld Church Slavonic became the ecclesiastical language.[39]Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at thePreslav Literary School inBulgaria.[40][41][42] The earliest Slavic literary works were composed inBulgaria,Duklja and Dalmatia. The religious works were almost exclusively translations, from Latin (Croatia, Slovenia) and especially Greek (Bulgaria, Serbia).[39] In the 10th and 11th centuries theOld Church Slavonic led to the creation of various regional forms likeSerbo-Croatian andSlovenian.[39] Economic, religious and political centres ofOhrid andPreslav contributed to the importantliterary production in theBulgarian Empire.[43] TheBogomil sect, derived from Manichaeism, was deemed heretical, but managed to spread fromBulgaria to Bosnia (where it gained a foothold),[44] and France (Cathars).[citation needed]
Carinthia came under Germanic rule in the 10th century and came permanently under Western (Roman) Christian sphere of influence.[45] What is today Croatia came under Eastern Roman (Byzantine) rule after the Barbarian age, and while most of the territory was Slavicized, a handful of fortified towns, with mixed population, remained under Byzantine authority and continued to use Latin.[45] Dalmatia, now applied to the narrow strip with Byzantine towns, came under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, while the Croatian state remained pagan until Christianization during the reign ofCharlemagne, after which religious allegiance was to Rome.[45] Croats threw off Frankish rule in the 9th century and took over the Byzantine Dalmatian towns, after which Hungarian conquest led to Hungarian suzerainty, although retaining an army and institutions.[46] Croatia lost much of Dalmatia to the Republic of Venice which held it until the 18th century.[47] Hungary governed Croatia through a duke, and the coastal towns through aban.[47] A feudal class emerged in the Croatian hinterland in the late 13th century, among whom were theKurjaković,Kačić and most notably theŠubić.[48] Dalmatian fortified towns meanwhile maintained autonomy, with a Roman patrician class and Slavic lower class, first under Hungary and then Venice after centuries of struggle.[49]
Ibn al-Faqih described two kinds of South Slavic people, the first of swarthy complexion and dark hair, living near the Adriatic coast, and the other as light, living in the hinterland.[citation needed]
Through Islamization, communities of Slavic Muslims emerged, which survive until today in Bosnia, south Serbia, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria.[citation needed]
WhilePan-Slavism has its origins in the 17th-century Slavic Catholic clergymen in the Republic of Venice and Republic of Ragusa, it crystallized only in the mid-19th century amidst rise of nationalism in the Ottoman and Habsburg empires.[citation needed]
The Serbo-Croatian varieties have strong structural unity and are regarded by most linguists as constituting one language.[50] Today,language secessionism has led to the codification of several distinct standards: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. These Serbo-Croatian standards are all based on theShtokavian dialect group. Other dialect groups, which have lower intelligibility with Shtokavian, areChakavian inDalmatia andKajkavian inCroatia proper. The dominance of Shtokavian across Serbo-Croatian speaking lands is due to historical westward migration during the Ottoman period. Slovene is South Slavic but has many features shared with West Slavic languages. ThePrekmurje Slovene andKajkavian are especially close, and there is no sharp delineation between them. In southeastern Serbia, dialects enter a transitional zone with Bulgarian and Macedonian, with features of both groups, and are commonly calledTorlakian. The Eastern South Slavic languages are Bulgarian and Macedonian. Bulgarian has retained more archaic Slavic features in relation to the other languages. Bulgarian has two mainyat splits. Macedonian was codified in Communist Yugoslavia in 1945. The northern and easternMacedonian dialects are regarded as transitional to Serbian and Bulgarian, respectively. Furthermore, in Greece there is a notable Slavic-speaking populationin Greek Macedonia andWestern Thrace. Slavic dialects in western Greek Macedonia (Kastoria,Florina) are usually classified asMacedonian, those in eastern Greek Macedonia (Serres,Drama) and Western Thrace asBulgarian and the central ones (Edessa,Kilkis) as either Macedonian or transitional between Macedonian and Bulgarian.[51][52] Balkan Slavic languages are part of a "Balkan sprachbund" withareal features shared with other non-Slavic languages in the Balkans.[citation needed]
Admixture analysis of autosomal SNPs of the Balkan region in a global context on the resolution level of 7 assumed ancestral populations: the African (brown), South/West European (light blue), Asian (yellow), Middle Eastern (orange), South Asian (green), North/East European (dark blue) and beige Caucasus component[53]Autosomal analysis presenting the historical contribution of different donor groups in some European populations. Polish sample was selected to represent the Slavic influence, and it is suggesting a strong and early impact in Greece (30-37%), Romania (48-57%), Bulgaria (55-59%), and Hungary (54-84%).[54]The genetic legacy of the Slavic expansion (black), per Gretzinger et al. (2025).[55]
According to the 2013autosomalIBD survey "of recent genealogical ancestry over the past 3,000 years at a continental scale", the speakers of Serbo-Croatian language share a very high number of common ancestors dated to themigration period approximately 1,500 years ago with Poland and Romania-Bulgaria cluster among others in Eastern Europe. It is concluded to be caused by theHunnic and Slavic expansion, which was a "relatively small population that expanded over a large geographic area", particularly "the expansion of the Slavic populations into regions of low population density beginning in the sixth century" and that it is "highly coincident with the modern distribution of Slavic languages".[56] According to Kushniarevich et al. 2015, the Hellenthal et al. 2014 IBD analysis also found "multi-directional admixture events among East Europeans (both Slavic and non-Slavic), dated to around 1,000–1,600 YBP" which coincides with "the proposed time-frame for the Slavic expansion".[57] The Slavic influence is "dated to 500-900 CE or a bit later with over 40-50% among Bulgarians, Romanians, and Hungarians".[56] The 2015 IBD analysis found that the South Slavs have lower proximity to Greeks than with East and West Slavs and that there's an "even patterns of IBD sharing among East-West Slavs–'inter-Slavic' populations (Hungarians,Romanians andGagauz)–and South Slavs, i.e. across an area of assumed historic movements of people including Slavs". The slight peak of shared IBD segments between South and East-West Slavs suggests a shared "Slavonic-time ancestry".[57] The 2014 IBD analysis comparison of Western Balkan and Middle Eastern populations also found negligible gene flow between 16th and 19th century during theIslamization of the Balkans.[53]
According to a 2014admixture analysis of Western Balkan, the South Slavs show a genetic uniformity. Bosnians and Croatians were closer to East European populations and largely overlapped with Hungarians from Central Europe.[53] In the 2015 analysis, Bosnians and Croatians formed a western South Slavic cluster together with Slovenians, in opposition to an eastern cluster formed by Macedonians and Bulgarians, with Serbians in between the two. The western cluster has an inclination toward Hungarians, Czechs, and Slovaks, while the eastern ones lean toward Romanians and, to some extent, to Greeks.[57] The modeled ancestral genetic component of Balto-Slavs among South Slavs was between 55 and 70%.[57] In the 2018 analysis of Slovenian population, the Slovenian population clustered with Croatians, Hungarians and was close to Czech.[58]
The 2006 Y-DNA study results "suggest that the Slavic expansion started from the territory of present-day Ukraine, thus supporting the hypothesis that places the earliest known homeland of Slavs in the basin of the middleDnieper".[59] According to genetic studies until 2020, the distribution, variance and frequency of theY-DNA haplogroupsR1a andI2 and their subclades R-M558, R-M458 and I-CTS10228 among South Slavs are in correlation with the spreading of Slavic languages during the medieval Slavic expansion from Eastern Europe, most probably from the territory of present-dayUkraine andSoutheastern Poland.[60][61][62][63][64][65][66]
Prior to the advent of Roman rule, a number of native or autochthonous populations had lived in the Balkans since ancient times. South of theJireček line were theGreeks. To the north, there wereIllyrians,Thracians andDacians. They were mainly tribalistic and generally lacked awareness of any ethno-political affiliation. Over the classical ages, they were at times invaded, conquered and influenced byCelts,ancient Greeks andancient Romans. Roman influence, however, was initially limited to cities concentrated along the Dalmatian coast, later spreading to a few scattered cities inside the Balkan interior, particularly along the river Danube (Sirmium,Belgrade,Niš). Roman citizens from throughout the empire settled in these cities and in the adjacent countryside. Following the fall of Rome and numerous barbarian raids, the population in the Balkans dropped, as did commerce and general standards of living. Many people were killed or taken prisoner by invaders. This demographic decline was particularly attributed to a drop in the number of indigenous peasants living in rural areas. They were the most vulnerable to raids and were also hardest hit by the financial crises that plagued the falling empire. However, the Balkans were not desolate, and considerable numbers of indigenous people remained. Only certain areas tended to be affected by the raids (e.g. lands around major land routes, such as the Morava corridor).[67] In addition to the autochthons, there were remnants of previous invaders such as "Huns" and variousGermanic peoples when the Slavs arrived.Sarmatian tribes such as theIazyges were still recorded as living in theBanat region of the Danube.[68] The mixing of Slavs and other peoples is evident ingenetic studies included in the article.
^Dvornik, Francis (1956).The Slavs: Their Early History and Civilization. Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences. p. 179.The Psalter and the Book of Prophets were adapted or "modernized" with special regard to their use in Bulgarian churches, and it was in this school that glagolitic writing was replaced by the so-called Cyrillic writing, which was more akin to the Greek uncial, simplified matters considerably and is still used by the Orthodox Slavs.
^Comrie, Bernard & Corbett, Greville G., eds. (2002) [1st. Pub. 1993].The Slavonic Languages. London & New York: Routledge.OCLC49550401.
^Trudgill P., 2000, "Greece and European Turkey: From Religious to Linguistic Identity". In: Stephen Barbour and Cathie Carmichael (eds.), Language and Nationalism in Europe, Oxford : Oxford University Press, p.259.
^Boeschoten, Riki van (1993): Minority Languages in Northern Greece. Study Visit to Florina, Aridea, (Report to the European Commission, Brussels), p. 13 "The Western dialect is used in Florina and Kastoria and is closest to the language used north of the border, the Eastern dialect is used in the areas of Serres and Drama and is closest to Bulgarian, the Central dialect is used in the area between Edessa and Salonica and forms an intermediate dialect"
^"Companion website for "A genetic atlas of human admixture history", Hellenthal et al, Science (2014)".A genetic atlas of human admixture history.Archived from the original on 2 September 2019. Retrieved10 December 2020. Hellenthal, Garrett; Busby, George B.J.; Band, Gavin; Wilson, James F.; Capelli, Cristian; Falush, Daniel; Myers, Simon (14 February 2014)."A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History".Science.343 (6172):747–751.Bibcode:2014Sci...343..747H.doi:10.1126/science.1243518.ISSN0036-8075.PMC4209567.PMID24531965. Hellenthal, G.; Busby, G. B.; Band, G.; Wilson, J. F.; Capelli, C.; Falush, D.; Myers, S. (2014)."Supplementary Material for "A genetic atlas of human admixture history"".Science.343 (6172):747–751.Bibcode:2014Sci...343..747H.doi:10.1126/science.1243518.PMC4209567.PMID24531965.S7.6 "East Europe": The difference between the 'East Europe I' and 'East Europe II' analyses is that the latter analysis included the Polish as a potential donor population. The Polish were included in this analysis to reflect a Slavic language speaking source group." "We speculate that the second event seen in our six Eastern Europe populations between northern European and southern European ancestral sources may correspond to the expansion of Slavic language speaking groups (commonly referred to as the Slavic expansion) across this region at a similar time, perhaps related to displacement caused by the Eurasian steppe invaders (38; 58). Under this scenario, the northerly source in the second event might represent DNA from Slavic-speaking migrants (sampled Slavic-speaking groups are excluded from being donors in the EastEurope I analysis). To test consistency with this, we repainted these populations adding the Polish as a single Slavic-speaking donor group ("East Europe II" analysis; see Note S7.6) and, in doing so, they largely replaced the original North European component (Figure S21), although we note that two nearby populations, Belarus and Lithuania, are equally often inferred as sources in our original analysis (Table S12). Outside these six populations, an admixture event at the same time (910CE, 95% CI:720-1140CE) is seen in the southerly neighboring Greeks, between sources represented by multiple neighboring Mediterranean peoples (63%) and the Polish (37%), suggesting a strong and early impact of the Slavic expansions in Greece, a subject of recent debate (37). These shared signals we find across East European groups could explain a recent observation of an excess of IBD sharing among similar groups, including Greece, that was dated to a wide range between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago (37)
^A. Zupan; et al. (2013)."The paternal perspective of the Slovenian population and its relationship with other populations".Annals of Human Biology.40 (6):515–526.doi:10.3109/03014460.2013.813584.PMID23879710.S2CID34621779.However, a study by Battaglia et al. (2009) showed a variance peak for I2a1 in the Ukraine and, based on the observed pattern of variation, it could be suggested that at least part of the I2a1 haplogroup could have arrived in the Balkans and Slovenia with the Slavic migrations from a homeland in present-day Ukraine... The calculated age of this specific haplogroup together with the variation peak detected in the suggested Slavic homeland could represent a signal of Slavic migration arising from medieval Slavic expansions. However, the strong genetic barrier around the area of Bosnia and Herzegovina, associated with the high frequency of the I2a1b-M423 haplogroup, could also be a consequence of a Paleolithic genetic signal of a Balkan refuge area, followed by mixing with a medieval Slavic signal from modern-day Ukraine.
^Underhill, Peter A. (2015), "The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a",European Journal of Human Genetics,23 (1):124–131,doi:10.1038/ejhg.2014.50,PMC4266736,PMID24667786,R1a-M458 exceeds 20% in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Western Belarus. The lineage averages 11–15% across Russia and Ukraine and occurs at 7% or less elsewhere (Figure 2d). Unlike hg R1a-M458, the R1a-M558 clade is also common in the Volga-Uralic populations. R1a-M558 occurs at 10–33% in parts of Russia, exceeds 26% in Poland and Western Belarus, and varies between 10 and 23% in the Ukraine, whereas it drops 10-fold lower in Western Europe. In general, both R1a-M458 and R1a-M558 occur at low but informative frequencies in Balkan populations with known Slavonic heritage.
^Pamjav, Horolma; Fehér, Tibor; Németh, Endre; Koppány Csáji, László (2019).Genetika és őstörténet (in Hungarian). Napkút Kiadó. p. 58.ISBN978-963-263-855-3.Archived from the original on 27 September 2023. Retrieved12 December 2020.Az I2-CTS10228 (köznevén "dinári-kárpáti") alcsoport legkorábbi közös őse 2200 évvel ezelőttre tehető, így esetében nem arról van szó, hogy a mezolit népesség Kelet-Európában ilyen mértékben fennmaradt volna, hanem arról, hogy egy, a mezolit csoportoktól származó szűk család az európai vaskorban sikeresen integrálódott egy olyan társadalomba, amely hamarosan erőteljes demográfiai expanzióba kezdett. Ez is mutatja, hogy nem feltétlenül népek, mintsem családok sikerével, nemzetségek elterjedésével is számolnunk kell, és ezt a jelenlegi etnikai identitással összefüggésbe hozni lehetetlen. A csoport elterjedése alapján valószínűsíthető, hogy a szláv népek migrációjában vett részt, így válva az R1a-t követően a második legdominánsabb csoporttá a mai Kelet-Európában. Nyugat-Európából viszont teljes mértékben hiányzik, kivéve a kora középkorban szláv nyelvet beszélő keletnémet területeket.
^Fóthi, E.; Gonzalez, A.; Fehér, T.; et al. (2020), "Genetic analysis of male Hungarian Conquerors: European and Asian paternal lineages of the conquering Hungarian tribes",Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences,12 (1): 31,Bibcode:2020ArAnS..12...31F,doi:10.1007/s12520-019-00996-0,Based on SNP analysis, the CTS10228 group is 2200 ± 300 years old. The group's demographic expansion may have begun in Southeast Poland around that time, as carriers of the oldest subgroup are found there today. The group cannot solely be tied to the Slavs, because the proto-Slavic period was later, around 300–500 CE... The SNP-based age of the Eastern European CTS10228 branch is 2200 ± 300 years old. The carriers of the most ancient subgroup live in Southeast Poland, and it is likely that the rapid demographic expansion which brought the marker to other regions in Europe began there. The largest demographic explosion occurred in the Balkans, where the subgroup is dominant in 50.5% of Croatians, 30.1% of Serbs, 31.4% of Montenegrins, and in about 20% of Albanians and Greeks. As a result, this subgroup is often called Dinaric. It is interesting that while it is dominant among modern Balkan peoples, this subgroup has not been present yet during the Roman period, as it is almost absent in Italy as well (see Online Resource 5; ESM_5).
^Kushniarevich, Alena; Kassian, Alexei (2020),"Genetics and Slavic languages", in Marc L. Greenberg (ed.),Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online, Brill,doi:10.1163/2589-6229_ESLO_COM_032367, retrieved10 December 2020,The geographic distributions of the major eastern European NRY haplogroups (R1a-Z282, I2a-P37) overlap with the area occupied by the present-day Slavs to a great extent, and it might be tempting to consider both haplogroups as Slavic-specic patrilineal lineages
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