Editing Slavic languages (section)

===Common roots and ancestry===
[[File:Balto-Slavic lng.png|thumb|left|upright=1.18|Area of Balto-Slavic dialectic continuum (''purple'') with proposed material cultures correlating to speakers Balto-Slavic in Bronze Age (''white''). ''Red'' dots = archaic Slavic hydronyms]]

Slavic languages descend from [[Proto-Slavic]], their immediate [[parent language]], ultimately deriving from [[Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]], the ancestor language of all [[Indo-European languages]], via a [[Proto-Balto-Slavic language|Proto-Balto-Slavic]] stage. During the Proto-Balto-Slavic period a number of exclusive [[isogloss]]es in phonology, morphology, lexis, and syntax developed, which makes Slavic and [[Baltic languages|Baltic]] the closest related of all the Indo-European branches. The secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500–1000 BCE.{{sfn|Novotná|Blažek|2007|loc=p. 185–210: ""Classical glottochronology" conducted by Czech Slavist M. Čejka in 1974 dates the Balto-Slavic split to −910±340 BCE, Sergei Starostin in 1994 dates it to 1210 BCE, and "recalibrated glottochronology" conducted by Novotná & Blažek dates it to 1400–1340 BCE. This agrees well with Trziniec-Komarov culture, localized from Silesia to Central Ukraine and dated to the period 1500–1200 BCE"}}

A minority of Baltists maintain the view that the Slavic group of languages differs so radically from the neighboring Baltic group ([[Lithuanian language|Lithuanian]], [[Latvian language|Latvian]], and the now-extinct [[Old Prussian language|Old Prussian]]), that they could not have shared a parent language after the breakup of the [[Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]] continuum about five millennia ago. Substantial advances in Balto-Slavic [[accentology]] that occurred in the last three decades, however, make this view very hard to maintain nowadays, especially when one considers that there was most likely no "[[Proto-Baltic language|Proto-Baltic]]" language and that [[Western Baltic languages|West Baltic]] and [[Eastern Baltic languages|East Baltic]] differ from each other as much as each of them does from Proto-Slavic.{{sfn|Kapović|2008|loc=p. 94: "Kako rekosmo, nije sigurno je li uopće bilo prabaltijskoga jezika. Čini se da su dvije posvjedočene, preživjele grane baltijskoga, istočna i zapadna, različite jedna od druge izvorno kao i svaka posebno od praslavenskoga"}}

[[File:Bascanska ploca.jpg|thumb|right|[[Baška tablet]], 11th century, [[Krk]], [[Croatia]].]]