High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Venetic theory (Slovene: venetska teorija) is a widely diffused autochthonist theory of the origin of Slovenes which denies the Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps in the 6th century, claiming that proto-Slovenes (also known as Veneti) have inhabited the region since ancient times. Although it has been rejected by scholars, it has been an influential alternative explanation of the Slovenian ethnogenesis. During the 1980s and 1990s, it gained wide attention in Slovenia and the former Yugoslavia.