This book presents an introductory and comprehensive history of the Slavic-speaking peoples who inhabited Eastern and Southern Europe during the 700-year period stretching from the first archaeological and historical records to the establishment of their first organised polities.The book is organised thematically (social organisation, politics and government, economy, religion, culture) in order to present some of the most recent scholarly advances in a range of fields, showing new light in some historical scholarly polemics. It is a political and cultural history that incorporates recent findings in areas previously overlooked in scholarly literature, such as slavery, the role of women, the importance of Jewish communities, and the problematic relations of all these emerging polities with neighbouring empires. Instead of focusing exclusively on any specific geographic area, or dealing mainly with linguistic and cultural aspects, the book provides a much-needed overview of the origins of many modern nations in Eastern and Southern Europe.Written in an accessible style and complete with a comparative chronology, this is a comprehensive introduction to students and researchers in the fields of history, philology, and Slavic and East European Studies.