The
Slavic peoples are an
Indo-European panethnicity living in
Central Europe,
Eastern Europe,
Southeast Europe,
North Asia and
Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad
ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the
Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. From the early 6th century they spread to inhabit most of
Central and Eastern Europe and the
Balkans.
In addition to their main population centre in Europe, some East Slavs also settled later in
Siberia and
Central Asia.
Part of all Slavic ethnicities emigrated to other parts of the world.
Over half of
Europe's territory is inhabited by Slavic-speaking communities.
The worldwide population of people of Slavic descent is close to 400 million for which they rank fourth among
panethnicities in the world.