Serboi

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The Serboi () was a tribe mentioned in Greco-Roman geography as living in the North Caucasus, believed by scholars to have been Sarmatian. In 10th century, Byzantine emperor Constantin VII. Porphyrogennetos mentionin his book De Ceremoniis two tribes named Krevatades (Krevatas) and Sarban (Sarbani) located in Caucasus near Alania. There were most likely the original Sarmatian tribes. Today some researches identified as Croats and Serbians.

Greco-Roman Ptolemy (100–170) mentioned in his Geography (ca. 150) the Serboi as inhabiting, along with other tribes, the land between the northeastern foothills of the Caucasus and the Volga. Moszyński derived the name from Indo-European *ser-, *serv-, meaning "guard, protect" (cognate of Latin servus), and originally, it may have meant "guardians of animals", that is "shepherds". Similar toponyms were mentioned earlier farther away.

The Sarmatians were eventually decisively assimilated (e.g. Slavicisation) and absorbed by the Proto-Slavic population of Eastern Europe around the Early Medieval Age. Scholars have connected the ethnonym with those of the Slavic peoples of Serbs and Croats in Europe. There is a theory that "Horoati" and their kin Serboi fled a Hunnic invasion into southern Poland and southeast Germany where they were assimilated by Slavs, and by the time of the 7th-century Slavic migration to the Balkans were completely Slavicized. Others believe that the tribe may in fact have been early Slavic, as noted by Lithuanian-American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994), and others. While some Serbian historians treat them as a Sarmatian tribe that was part of the Proto-Serb ethnogenesis, some alternate historians treat them as a historical Serb tribe, pushing the Serbs' history further into antiquity.

The tribe was included on maps of the antique Sarmatia Asiatica as Serbi, Sirbi, in the Early modern period.

See also
 Origin hypotheses of the Serbs
 White Serbs
 Serbs
 Sorbs
 Early Slavs

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Category:Tribes in Greco-Roman historiography
Category:Sarmatian tribes
Category:Alans
Category:History of the Serbs