The Slavs are an Indo-European people native to Eastern Europe who, beginning in the 5th century AD, expanded into Central Europe, the Balkans, Siberia, and Central Asia. The Slavs originated in the Baltics region during the 1st century AD, and they were known to the Romans as the "Venedians". The Venedians intermarried with the Sarmatians and eventually became so populous that groups such as the Anteans began to split off, creating multiple new Slavic peoples. During the Migration Period of the 5th-6th centuries AD, the Slavs settled the lands abandoned by the Germanic peoples fleeing the Hunnic invasions, reaching as far west as the Oder and south into present-day Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Pannonia, and the Balkans. In 577, the Slavs invaded by the Byzantine Empire in such great numbers that it was recorded that the grass would now regrow where the Slavs had marched through. From the 7th to 9th centuries, Slavic states such as Great Moravia and the First Bulgarian Empire emerged, and Bulgaria was influential in the spread of Christianity to Eastern Europe. However, the invasion of the nomadic Magyars and the Germanization of Austria led to the division of the Slavs into the "West Slavs" (who eventually became affiliated with Latin Christianity) and the "East Slavs" (who eventually became affiliated with Greek Christianity). The Slavs were Christianized both through missionary efforts (such as those of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius) as well as through warfare, as seen in the Northern Crusades by Christian Germans and Poles against the Slavic pagan Wends and the pagan Baltic peoples. Most of the Slavic peoples fell under foreign rule from the 14th to 19th centuries, with Poland being partitioned between Prussia, the Austrian Empire, and the Russian Empire, the Balkans being divided between the Ottoman Empire and Austria, and Russia ruling over most of the remaining Slavic peoples. However, the Balkan Wars of the late 19th-early 20th centuries and World War I led to the independence of the Slavic nations, and the Breakup of Yugoslavia and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union during the 1990s led to the creation of several new Slavic nation-states. Today, Slavic countries include Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Montenegro, while the Slavic diaspora has a major presence (over 10%) in Kazakhstan, the Baltics, and Canada. Orthodox Slavs include Belarusians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Russians, Rusyns, Serbs, and Ukrainians; Catholic Slavs include Croats, Czechs, Kashubians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Sorbs; Protestant Slavs include the Bohemian Hussites; and Islamic Slavs include the Bosniaks, Bulgarian Pomaks, Gorani, and Torbesi.