The Antes or Antae were an ancient Slavic-Iranian tribal union^{[citation needed]} in Eastern Europe who lived north of the lower Danube and the Black Sea (on the territory of modern Moldova and Ukraine) in the 6th and 7th century AD and who are associated with the archaeological Penkovka culture.^{[citation needed]}

Procopius and Jordanes mention the Antes, who inhabited the left (north) bank of the lower Danube. They remarked that they looked and sounded 'identical' (i.e. very similar) to the Sclavanoi, who dwelt along the middle Danube.^{[citation needed]}

The word Antes is considered by some linguists to be an Iranic name. They suggest that the Antes were one of the Sarmato-Alanic tribes that in the 4th century inhabited the region between the Caucasus and Ukrainian steppes, perhaps between the Prut and lower Dneister rivers in what is now modern Moldova and southwestern Ukraine. With time, their center of power shifted northward into what is now western and central Ukraine.^{[citation needed]} In the fifth and sixth centuries they settled in Volhynia and subsequently in the middle Dnieper region near the present-day city of Kiev. As they moved north from the open steppe to the forest steppe, they mixed with Slavic tribes. They organised the Slavic tribes and the name Antes came to be used for the mixed Slavo-Alanic body. Eventually they were completely absorbed by the Slavs, but the name was preserved. A comparable theory exists for other Slavic tribes, namely Serbs and Croats.^{[citation needed]}