Like the Croats, the Serbs are believed to be a purely Slavic people who originated in Ukraine.

Some scholars now argue that the original Serbs were Central Asian Sarmatian nomads who en\tered Europe with the Huns in the fourth century CE.

The theory proposes that the Sarmatian Serbs settled in a land designated as White Serbia, in what is now Saxony and western Poland.

The Sarmatian Serbs, it is argued, intermarried with the indigenous Slavs of the region, adopted their language, and transferred their name to the Slavs.

Byzantine sources report that some Serbs migrated southward in the seventh century CE and eventually settled in the lands that now make up southern Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Rival chiefs, or zupani, vie to control the Serbs for five centuries after the migration.

Zupan Vlastimir forms a Serbian principality under the East Roman Empire around 850, and the Serbs soon convert to Eastern-rite Christianity.