This is a list of early Slavic peoples reported in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, that is, before the year AD 1500.

Ancestors

Antiquity

Middle Ages

East Slavs

West Slavs

South Slavs

South Slavic tribes descend mainly from two Slavic tribal confederations, Sclaveni and Antes. To reach the Balkans, the two groups took two different paths. While the Sclaveni came from Central Europe north of the Danube and migrated south around the eastern edges of the Alps and across the western part of the Pannonian Plain, the Antes came from the steppe between the Dniester and the Dnieper, penetrating into the Balkans throuhgh Transylvania or, alternatively, the mouth of the Danube. A number of historians have attributed the early split between Eastern and Western South Slavs to the different origins of Sclaveni and Antes. While Western South Slavs were closely linked to the Western Slavic Veneti, Eastern South Slavs originated from the Eastern Slavic Antes. This is confirmed by both historical records and the duplication of tribal names between West Slavs and Western South Slavs and East Slavs and Eastern South Slavs, respectively. For example, the Polabian White Serb confederation is generally thought to be the ancestor of both Western Slavic Sorbs and South Slavic Serbs, while the Dunabian Abodriti, also known as Praedenecenti, are generally associated with the Polabian Obotrites. The same is true for Antes and Eastern South Slavs. For example, part of the East Slavic Severians are known to have migrated to present-day northeastern Bulgaria, becoming foederati of the First Bulgarian Empire under the name Severi, while some Pripyat Dregoviches are assumed to have migrated to the valley of the Vardar, establishing themselves as the Drougoubitai. The Seven Slavic tribes are also hypothesized to be Antes hailing from the lands of modern Ukraine, but missing records of their tribal names makes the hypothesis unverifiable. Therefore, it has been suggested that the ancestors of medieval Bosnians, Serbs and Croatians were the Sclaveni, wereas the progenitors of the Bulgarian Slavs were the Antes. Nevertheless, there must have been substantial overlap between Sclaveni and Antes, especially in contact zones. For example, the exact origin of White Croats is still shrouded in mystery. Some scholars consider them be an Antes tribal polity that migrated to Galicia in the 3rd–4th century, while others regard them as early Sclaveni or as a mixture of both Antes and Sclaveni. Nevertheless, South Slavs over time evolved into a new Slavic ethnolinguistic group. This phenomenon was accentuated by the Bavarian expansion east (as an element in the Ostsiedlung) and by the Magyar settlement and expansion in the Pannonian Plain, which severed the contiguous land or territory between West and South Slavs (in the Middle Danube river basin) and contact between both of them, contributing to greater differentiation.

Unclassified Slavs

Possible Slavs

Unclassified

Slavs or Balts

Slavs, Balts or Uralics

Slavs or Romance peoples

Slavs or Turkics

Mixed

Unclassified peoples or tribes

Mentioned by Bavarian Geographer and possibly Baltic Indo-European Mentioned by Bavarian Geographer and possibly Iranian Indo-European Mentioned by Bavarian Geographer and possibly Turkic Mentioned by Bavarian Geographer and possibly Uralic Mentioned by Bavarian Geographer and Unknown

Sources